The Biden and Karloutsos families at Fr Alex Karloutsos’s parish in the Hamptons, 2016.

This is the fifth article in our series on Fr Alex Karloutsos. Here are the first four:

• The Father Alex Karloutsos Origin Story
• Karloutsos and the Rise of Bartholomew
• Father Alex and the Mother Church
• Karloutsos and 9/11

“I first met Joe Biden in 1987, when he ran for President of the United States,” Fr Alex Karloutsos told me. Then-Senator Biden was running in the Democratic primary, which was ultimately won by Greek-American Michael Dukakis. A lawyer-friend  from Chicago, Theodore J. Theophilos, approached Karloutsos to ask for his support for Biden. Karloutsos was hesitant: the Greeks certainly couldn’t abandon Dukakis, and Karloutsos also had a strong relationship with George H.W. Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee. “But the truth is that Joe Biden had been a very strong friend of the Greek-American community, and it’s important that if your friend is loyal, you don’t give up on your friend because you’re helping your relatives. So we did not abandon Joe Biden, but we did help Michael Dukakis a great deal more.”

Biden dropped out before the year was over, but he and Karloutsos would see each other from time to time, and they developed a friendly relationship through Mark Angelson, one of Biden’s closest friends and a trusted colleague of Ted Theophilos. “In the Senate, with Cyprus issues and Greek issues and Greek-American issues, he was all-in. He became one of the champions.” But Biden and Karloutsos weren’t especially close … yet.

***

The turning point came in 2008. “He was running for President against Obama and Hillary, and the Biden campaign was not getting money from the Jewish community and the black community, which they normally got. Hillary was taking the Jewish money, and the black community was supporting Obama. Dennis Toner, who was Biden’s chief of staff, went to Andy Manatos and said, ‘Listen, we don’t have the money to stay in this race, and we need it. Can you guys help us?’ Andy came to me – Andy’s the guy who gave him the nickname “Bidenopoulos” – and he asked if I’d help find some serious donors. So I brought in George Tsunis, and George did a great job in raising money, and that helped keep Biden in the race. And then I got my other friends to raise money, and he saw that I was loyal to the end. After he became Vice President of the United States, we were close.” Biden invited Karloutsos to the Vice Presidential residence for various events – not just official but personal, such as for Christmas. “He introduced me to his son Beau when he was running for attorney general of Delaware again. He introduced me to his son Hunter, and we became friends with Hunter. Hunter and my son Michael, and Beau, and us, and his niece Carolyn Biden, we were all friends.” Hunter Biden would later tell Fr Karloutsos, “Father Alex, the Karloutsos family, the Biden family – it’s one family.”

In 2014, Biden’s son Beau was running for governor of Delaware, and Joe – who was Vice President at that point – had to step in for his son as speaker at a Greek-American campaign event hosted by Michael Karloutsos at his Water Works Restaurant in Philadelphia. Fr Karloutsos and his wife Xanthi were there. He sums up Biden’s comments: “He says, ‘You know, Beau could not be here, so I’m filling in. I hope you guys find it’s alright’ – you know, kidding around, here’s the Vice President. And he says, ‘I’m the Vice President of the United States, and I owe it all to you, to the Greek community. When I was running –’ and then he went through the story about the black and Jewish communities, ‘– but you guys stepped up. If you had not stepped up, I wouldn’t have stayed in the race. You kept me in the race, and I got to know Barack, and because of that, I became Vice President. So if it wasn’t for the Greeks, for you, Father Alex, and for others, I would not be Vice President of the United States.’ And Biden would not have become President of the United States if he hadn’t first been Vice President,” Fr Karloutsos added.

The next year, Beau Biden died of cancer. Fr Karloutsos attended the funeral, and afterward, the Biden family created the Beau Biden Foundation. “Hunter called up and said that they wanted to have a Karloutsos as part of Biden family team for the foundation. They wanted Presbytera Xanthi to be on the board.” The Biden and Karloutsos families became even closer. Fr Karloutsos arranged for the Beau Biden Foundation to be the beneficiary at “Blue Dream,” an annual fundraiser held at Karloutsos’s parish in the Hamptons, raising $200,000. The Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate gave Biden their highest honor, the Patriarch Athenagoras Human Rights Award. When Fr Karloutsos and his wife Xanthi were themselves given the Athenagoras award, Biden came for the ceremony as a surprise with his son Hunter.  Biden and Karloutsos spent time together at innumerable events, even holding board meetings for the Beau Biden Foundation at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese headquarters in New York City.

Fr Alex Karloutsos and President Barack Obama

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(This article is mostly about the relationship between Biden and Karloutsos, but there’s a story from the Obama years that has to be included.)

“Everybody in the world wanted to meet Obama when he was first elected, right?” Karloutsos began. “He was now President of the United States, and everybody wanted to meet him. So the heads of state of the world were thinking of the line that would make sense. What would you tell Obama that would immediately get his attention, and he would feel that you know him? So Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was going to meet Obama with Archbishop Demetrios at the Conrad Istanbul Hotel, and the Patriarch said to me, ‘What do you think I should say to Obama?’ I said, ‘I think you should tell him, Mister President, I know that you know a lot of different things, but you were one hundred percent right about North Carolina winning the NCAA March Madness basketball title.” The Archbishop immediately says, ‘That’s ridiculous, Father Alex.’ I said, ‘Your Eminence, I know Barack Obama, I know what will get his attention.’ The Archbishop says to the Patriarch, ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘Panagiotate [Your All-Holiness], trust me, please don’t listen to the Archbishop on this. I know what I’m talking about.’

“So they go to the Conrad Hotel, and they’re talking, and before the conversation ends, His All Holiness says, ‘By the way, Mister President, I commend you. You were one hundred percent right. North Carolina won.’ So after this, Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel get on the Air Force One, they’re leaving, and Rahm Emanuel calls George Stephanopoulos, and he goes, ‘George, you won’t believe this. Everywhere we’ve been going, meeting heads of state, all these great advisors, and they’re all trying to get Obama’s favor and attention. You know what got his attention? Your Patriarch over here, he congratulated him about North Carolina.’ So George called me up and told me, Patriarch Bartholomew got the line that nobody else could get.”

***

“Father Alex, the Karloutsos family, the Biden family – it’s one family,” Hunter Biden once told Fr Karloutsos.

In April 2015, Karloutsos was visiting the White House. “We’re at the White House, and Hunter says, ‘If you’re free, my dad’s going to come by the Cafe Milano. I’d love for you to come by. We’re having a small dinner.’ So I said, ‘Sure.’ I went to my wife and said, ‘Well, just change our plans. We’ll go to Cafe Milano with our son Michael as well.’ We went into Cafe Milano in Georgetown – very nice restaurant – and I went in, and the Vice President joined later. He was sitting right across from me. We sat around a table, and there were about 20 to 25 people, and we met different people around the room. At the end of the table, on the far side, were a couple of guys from the Ukraine. It turns out that those were the guys from Burisma [a Ukrainian corporation].

“So Joe Biden comes in. He greets everybody, but he hugs me and my wife, and then he leaves.” Thus, according to Karloutsos, Biden had come to the dinner because he wanted to see them – but Hunter had told Karloutsos to come because Joe Biden would be there. “On occasion,” Fr Karloutsos explains, “your own children can take advantage. Like, ‘I know my father likes Father Alex, and so I’m going to tell him, Father Alex will be there, and that’ll make him more comfortable.’ So that’s how I became part of that investigation that’s been reported on in the New York Times.”

Joe Biden and Fr Alex Karloutsos

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A few months later, in the summer of 2015, Karloutsos was on a plane flying into New York’s JFK airport. An incident occurred on the plane – a drunk man apparently tried to touch a young woman inappropriately. Karloutsos’s wife Xanthi realized what was happening and informed a flight attendant, and after the plane landed, law enforcement came to get the man.

As Fr Karloutsos was getting off of the plane, his phone rang. “The phone rings, and the lady on the phone says, ‘Father Alex, it’s the White House. The Vice President wants to talk to you.’ Then all of the a sudden, the police come up to me, and they said, ‘Father, we’ve got to speak to you.’ And the Vice President is talking to me – I’ve never told Joe this story, I’ve got to tell him this story! – the Vice President is talking, saying, ‘Father Alex, we’re very concerned about Greece leaving the European Union, and it’s not only about Greece, but it’s about the security of the United States that has consequences for Israel.’ And he started globalizing everything and saying how we’re all interconnected.

“In the meantime, the policeman says, ‘Sir, put down the phone.’ And Biden is saying to me, ‘Who can I talk to in the Greek community.’ I said, ‘Well, Mr. Vice President, [then-Prime Minister of Greece] Tsipras is so hated because he’s a communist, and there’s only one guy that I know that actually met with Tsipras and can do it, and his name is Angelo Tsakopoulos.’ The Vice President said, ‘You know, Father, actually we need your help to make sure this doesn’t happen. How do I get this thing done?’ In the meantime, the policeman is now threatening to put me in jail because I’m talking on the phone. ‘Put down the damn phone, sir!’ My daughter said, ‘Do you know my father is a Port Authority chaplain, and he’s talking to the Vice President of the United States.  This is ridiculous.’ The policeman says, ‘He’s really talking to the Vice President??’”

***

Years earlier, Fr Karloutsos had become acquainted with the Turkish religious figure  Fethullah Gulen, leader of the political Islamist Hizmet Movement, who had been in exile in the United States since 1999. Gulen was having trouble getting a green card to stay in the U.S., and at the request of the AK Party, Karloutsos helped him find a law firm and even wrote a letter in support. “Mr. Gulen is not only one of the world’s foremost spiritual leaders, he is also one of the world’s top religious scholars,” Karloutsos said in his letter. The United States ultimately granted Gulen’s application.

In July 2016, just a couple weeks after the end of the Orthodox council in Crete, a faction within the Turkish military attempted a coup d’etat, which was crushed by Turkish President Erdogan and his supporters. The Turkish government accused Gulen and his supporters of masterminding the coup, and his group was labeled a terrorist organization.

“Somebody in Russia tried to tie me to the coup,” Fr Karloutsos told me. “It was an article from Russia, saying that Father Alex is very close to Gulen. This spread around Turkey, that I was a Gulen supporter against Erdogan.” Not just Karloutsos; Patriarch Bartholomew himself was widely accused in the Turkish press, despite a lack of evidence for any involvement of the Patriarchate in the coup attempt.

Shortly after this, Fr Karloutsos was in New York City when he got a call from the White House. He was told that Vice President Biden was going to be at a certain hotel in Times Square, and he wanted to meet with Fr Karloutsos and his wife Xanthi. “I thought we’d be there with eighty people,” Karloutsos said. “But we walked into this big room, and there’s a table set for three people: the Vice President, my wife, and myself. We were both looking at each other thinking, what’s going on here?” After chatting about their families, Biden got to the point: “He said to my wife, ‘Until things clear up, don’t let Father Alex go to Turkey, unless he comes with me.”

“Now,” Fr Karloutsos says, “I’ve been told I can go back there. But you can be told one thing, and then you wake up the next morning and they say, ‘No, I think you can enjoy a little bit more staying in a Turkish prison.’ It’s better safe than sorry. I don’t want to be another Andrew Brunson” (referring to an American Evangelical pastor in Turkey who was arrested and charged with supporting the coup attempt).

***

Biden didn’t run for President in 2016, but, of course, he did in 2020. Biden happened to be fundraising in the Hamptons when Fr Karloutsos’s parish was holding their annual Blue Dream fundraiser, and he invited Biden to make an appearance. At that point in the race, Biden was a longshot candidate. “Everyone was abandoning him,” Karloutsos told me. “Greek-American friends of mine were pulling away – except for a guy named David Peterson. He is the son of Pete Peterson, chairman of the Blackstone Group, former Secretary of Commerce under Nixon. David said, ‘Listen, I’m putting my money in again. I want you guys to stay in.’ And it just so happened that Biden needed that money to go to South Carolina [for the primary], and that’s where everything changed.” It was Biden’s first primary win and gave him strong momentum heading into the Super Tuesday primaries a few days later.

Just a week earlier, Fr Karloutsos’s brother Nick had died. Biden was in the thick of the presidential campaign, but he called Karloutsos. “The phone rings, and Joe says, ‘Father Alex, how are you?’ I said, ‘I’m fine.’ He goes, ‘I’m really concerned – I heard your brother died. I lost a wife, I lost a child, lost a parent, but I never lost a sibling, and I want to make sure you’re alright.’ I said, ‘My God, you’ve got so many things to do. The country’s resting on your shoulders. You’ve got to win South Carolina – don’t waste your time with me!’ He says, ‘If I don’t worry about my friends and people that support our country and love our family, then what am I doing? So I’m doing the right thing, but I want you to know that I’m praying for you and praying for the soul of your brother Nick.’ He knew the name. He knew everything. I don’t know how he found out. I didn’t get a phone call from any of the bishops like that.”

President Joe Biden presents the Medal of Freedom to Father Alex Karloutsos, Thursday, July 7, 2022, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

***

In June of 2022, Fr Karloutsos’s granddaughter asked me, ‘Papou, will you take me and my friends to our friend’s house to go swimming?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll take you over there.’ So in the front seat was my granddaughter, and in the back seat were her friends. I’m driving along, and then all of a sudden the phone rings, and it shows up as ‘restricted.’ My granddaughter’s been in the car before when the President called me, or the Vice President, so she tells her friends, ‘Girls, be quiet. It’s an important phone call.’

“I answered, and I hear, ‘Father Alex, it’s Joe Biden.’ I said, ‘Mr. President, how are you?’ These girls are listening in the back of the car, going, ‘That’s the President of the United States!’ And he goes, ‘Father Alex, how is Xanthi now?’ I said, “She’s doing really well, but how did you know she was sick?’ He says, “I follow you. You don’t need to worry about it. I’m always there watching you.’ I said, ‘Well, I appreciate that. I’m really grateful you reached out to me, but my wife is fine.’ He says, ‘Well, I want her to be fine, because I want to invite you to the White House.’ I said, ‘That’s very kind of you. What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Did anybody tell you?’ ‘No.’ ‘I want to give you the Presidential Medal of Freedom. You’ve done so much for so many people. You’re a good priest. You deserve the honor, and I want to give it to you. I’m going to give it to you on July 7, so make sure your wife and your children will be able to come.’” Biden ended up going further, allowing Karloutsos to bring all of his grandchildren, too. “I had seventeen people – it was an entourage. Everybody gets seven. I got seventeen. Can you believe that?”

Through the gift of a friend, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is on display at his church in the Hamptons.

***

“So, that’s the way it played out,” Karloutsos said. Of Biden, he concluded, “We do have a meaningful, substantive relationship. I think it is about a certain amount of loss and pain, and also about the fact of being there when his family needed it, and he was there when my family  needed it. And whenever he needed me politically, I was there, but I was also there when he needed me personally, and he was always there when our community needed him.”