Hunter Biden sought the State Department’s help for a Ukrainian energy company while President Joe Biden was vice president, according to the New York Times, which obtained the information from the agency via a FIOA request dating back to 2021.
The release of the document is significant for three reasons. First, the agency released the document after Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection, underscoring concerns among Republicans that the Biden administration covered up Hunter’s foreign business dealings that enriched the Biden family while Joe Biden was vice president.
Second, Hunter did not register as a foreign agent for his work with Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter $83,000 per month — or $1 million per year — just weeks after his father was announced as the “point person” on U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine. Hunter had no experience in energy or Ukraine before becoming a board member of the company and asking the U.S. government for help.
Third, the State Department sat on the document throughout the 2019-2020 impeachment proceedings of former President Donald Trump, who accused the Bidens of wrongdoing with Burisma. Democrats wrongly alleged that Trump engaged in a quid pro-quo to obtain information from Ukraine on the Bidens. The Senate exonerated Trump.
In 2016, Hunter asked the U.S. ambassador to Italy for help regarding Bursima’s “trouble securing regulatory approval for a geothermal energy project in Tuscany,” the Times reported Tuesday:
The difficulty is reflected in emails, found in Mr. Biden’s laptop cache, from one of his associates to an Italian businessman who claimed to have ties to Enrico Rossi, the president of the Tuscany regional government at the time.
…
Mr. Rossi said in an interview that he never met with Mr. Biden. He did not recall the U.S. Embassy reaching out to him about the project.
While Mr. Biden’s letter to the ambassador is referred to in the correspondence, The Times was unable to review its contents because the State Department appears to have redacted it in its entirety. The department cited exemptions allowing the withholding of records that would compromise individual privacy, attorney client privilege or the government’s deliberative process.
Joe Biden was allegedly not aware of Hunter’s request in 2016, the Times reported, though Joe Biden bragged that same year he forced the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who investigated Burisma for corruption. In 2015, Burisma was under suspicion of money laundering and public corruption. Shokin investigated the case before his termination — which was due to pressure from then-Vice President Biden, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma.
Though the Bidens’ work in Ukraine is well documented, the Justice Department did not charge Hunter with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires people to disclose when they lobby the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests.
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Special Prosecutor David Weiss could still charge Hunter with violating FARA because his sweetheart plea deal fell apart. It was negotiated in 2023 to give Hunter sweeping immunity. The sweetheart deal crumbled under judicial scrutiny, and Weiss subsequently filed separate gun and tax charges in Delaware and California, respectively. The tax trial is scheduled for September.
In a tax-related court filing last week, Weiss stopped short of accusing Hunter of having “improperly coordinated with the Obama administration,” after failing for years to indict him on FARA violations, opting instead to indict the president’s son on alleged tax and gun violations, potential wrongdoing that Republicans claim falls short of justice.
The court filings alleged, however, Hunter accepted $3,101,258 from Romanian partner Gabriel Popoviciu to “influence U.S. government agencies” when Joe Biden served as vice president.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.