It was a scene straight out of a film noir: A glamorous Hollywood writer flies in his private jet to a small Balkan enclave posing as a documentarian to gather information on a group of actors and filmmakers in the midst of shooting a biopic about Hunter Biden.
But the star of the surreal scenario that took place last fall in Serbia was Los Angeles-based lawyer Kevin Morris, a friend of Hunter’s who is now being accused of “spying” on the set of “My Son Hunter.”
The film, which is highly critical of Hunter for allegedly selling influence to foreign companies while his father, Joe, was vice president, is produced by husband-and-wife documentarians Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.
“On set, a man named Kevin Morris arrived and told us he was working on a documentary exposing Hunter’s corruption,” a tweet from the official “My Son Hunter” site declared on Tuesday. “He told us he was a retired lawyer associated with South Park. We allowed him and his crew to interview us, cast members, and film on our set.”
In fact, Morris is a successful lawyer and big-money Democratic Party supporter who has become Hunter Biden’s newest fixer and “sugar brother,” allegedly loaning the president’s son $2 million to help pay off his overdue federal taxes. In addition to the loan, Morris, 58, has become the architect of the legal and media strategy of the president’s beleaguered son. The lawyer, who counts Chris Rock and Matthew McConaughey among his celebrity clients, is also a prolific fiction writer of two novels and a collection of short stories.
Over the past two years, Morris has helped Biden, a self-taught artist, forge a deal to market his paintings, which are priced between $50,000 and $500,000 apiece. Morris has also paid Hunter’s monthly living expenses in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times. The Hollywood attorney even found a high-powered literary agent for Biden, 52, when he was writing “Beautiful Things,” a 2021 memoir that chronicles his drug and alcohol addictions. Biden was so grateful for Morris’ counsel that he included him as part of “the outstanding team behind this book” on the acknowledgments page of his memoir.
In fact, both Morris and Biden are represented by the same agents — Aevitas Creative Management — which looks after Morris’ own works, the novels “All Joe Knight” and “Gettysburg,” and the short story collection “White Man’s Problems.”
Morris is a highly successful lawyer and a self-made businessman, who rose from humble origins in Pennsylvania to launch his own firm, raking in hundreds of millions for his first clients, the creators of “South Park.” Now he’s thrown in his lot with the disgraced, drug-addled son of a president, filming his own documentary about Biden.
“The whole thing is so bizarre,” one Hollywood insider told The Post. “What is a guy like that doing with Hunter Biden?”
For the last couple of years at least, Morris has been a Democratic Party loyalist, and spent hundreds of thousands on backing Democratic candidates, including President Biden. He met Hunter Biden at a political fundraiser for his father in December 2019, according to the New York Times.
Morris, who owns a sprawling loft in Tribeca and spent more than $11 million to buy singer Olivia Newton-John’s Malibu compound in 2009, has doled out cash to other Democratic politicians, according to public records. Earlier this year, he gave $100,000 to a political action committee supporting Conor Lamb, a Democratic Pennsylvania congressman who is running to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, public records show. Lamb is trailing in the polls behind Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the Democratic primary race set for Tuesday.
Last year, Morris gave $50,000 to Americans Keeping Country First, a super PAC set up to pay for the defense of Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach or convict President Donald Trump following last year’s Capitol riots, according to the Federal Election Commission. Ten House Republicans, including Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep Adam Kinzinger, were part of that group, and 222 Democrats voted to impeach Trump. Morris gave $2,900 to Kinzinger’s re-election campaign last year before the congressman announced he was retiring last fall.
Morris also supported the American Bridge 21st Century PAC with a $50,000 donation. The controversial super PAC, founded by Hillary Clinton advocate David Brock in 2010, conducts opposition research into Republican politicians. “We find what Republicans are hiding and make sure voters hear about it,” according to its website.
Despite Morris’ outsize spending, “he’s very low-key,” said the Hollywood insider. “He’s certainly not one of those flashy Hollywood types, so this whole relationship with Hunter Biden is very strange.”
Morris was born Patrick Kevin Morris in Media, Pa., a town of just over 5,000 people about 13 miles outside Philadelphia. His mother worked as a school secretary and his father worked in a refinery. On some occasions, the struggling family relied on food stamps to get by, Morris has told interviewers in the past. Morris worked as a bartender to pay for his studies at Cornell University and law school at New York University, he told a reporter in 2007.
“For me it’s always been, take the leap, take the risk, throw yourself into the fire, and you’ll be rewarded,” Morris said in the interview.
He did just that when, as a newly minted attorney eager to break into Hollywood, he attended a party at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994 that changed his life. He met Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who would go on to create “South Park.” Morris watched their film “Cannibal: The Musical” and was so impressed, he agreed to represent them for free. At about the same time, he met McConaughey, who was struggling to break into film, and forged a similar deal with the aspiring actor. “Kevin’s been a friend and consigliere of mine for over 20 years,” said McConaughey in 2015. “I’ve always enjoyed his outlook and authenticities of where he’s from and wants to go.”
“The whole thing is so bizarre. What is a guy like that doing with Hunter Biden?”
a Hollywood insider to The Post
Morris is a director of the Just Keep Livin Foundation, a charity started by McConaughey and his model wife, Camila Alves, in 2006 to help high school students improve their physical and mental health, according to public records.
Morris has been married to Hollywood agent Gaby Morgerman since 1991. Morgerman, who grew up on Long Island, is senior vice president at William Morris Endeavor in Beverly Hills, and the couple has two children.
Although he’s made millions as a successful attorney, Morris has said he wanted to be a writer since he was 12 years old. “I think it’s my calling to be a creative person, an artist,” Morris told a Cornell University alumni publication in 2017 when he made a visit to the school to mentor young writers. “Even with me being a lawyer, my artistic orientation allowed me to get along in the practice that I chose, because when you represent creative people, it helps to be creative yourself.”
Morris, who launched his boutique law firm in Los Angeles in 1996, later put together a $550 million landmark licensing deal for Parker and Stone’s “South Park” and shared in a Tony Award as a co-producer of their hit musical, “Book of Mormon.” Last year, Morris negotiated another lucrative deal with the “South Park” creators, who signed a $900 million contract with Viacom CBS, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Now Morris is attempting to save Hunter Biden.
Morris has said he wants to publicly question the story behind The Post’s October 2020 exclusive revealing the contents of his infamous laptop — a situation that caused concern at the White House, according to the New York Times. In contrast to Morris, Biden’s defense lawyers want the president’s son to stay out of the spotlight and resolve a federal grand jury probe in Wilmington, Delaware, without going to trial if charges are filed, the Times said.
But Morris may have garnered even more unwanted attention after McAleer went public this week with his allegations that Morris spied on his production of “My Son Hunter.”
McAleer said Morris and his colleagues were given full access to the set and allowed to interview McAleer, co-producer McElhinney and the cast over several days, including over lengthy dinners.
But recent revelations about the relationship between Morris and Hunter Biden led McAleer to re-evaluate the visit, he said.
“They seemed to never switch the camera off — now I know why. This was an information-gathering exercise by a lawyer and his associates for their client,” said McAleer, whose film is set to be an unflattering portrait of the Biden family.
Morris did not return phone calls seeking comment.
— Additional reporting by Sara Nathan
