According to a report, Hunter Biden asked the U.S. State Department for help when he tried to close a deal for a Ukrainian gas company in Italy during his father’s vice presidency.
In 2016, Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy, asking for help on behalf of Burisma, a company on whose board he served. The New York TimesAt the time, Burisma was having trouble obtaining regulatory approval for a geothermal project in Tuscany, a businessman involved in the project told Just.
Criminal oligarch paid Hunter $$$ to influence US government: prosecutors
Biden asked “various people,” including John Phillips – then-US ambassador to Rome – whether they could establish a connection between Burisma and the president of the Tuscany region, said Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell. “No meeting took place, no project was realized, no request was ever made for anything in the US and only a connection in Italy was requested,” Lowell told the JustHe also described the letter as a “proper request.”
It is unclear whether the U.S. Embassy ever helped Burisma, and the energy project was never realized, according to the businessman involved.
The Just reported that it learned of Biden’s previously unreported bid on behalf of Burisma after a lengthy legal battle with the State Department. The newspaper said it first filed a public records request in 2021 and later sued after no records were released 18 months later.
A State Department spokeswoman told the newspaper that the timing of the release of the new Biden-related documents – which reportedly came the week after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election – was coincidental. A person familiar with the matter said the release of the documents had been planned weeks before the president’s announcement of his withdrawal from the race.
The Just also pointed to a backlog of requests for records within the department and the political impartiality of the officials responsible for processing those requests, and concluded that it was “unlikely” that the release could only take place after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race, “since this news was kept secret until the last minute.”
The text of Hunter Biden’s letter to Phillips appeared to have been completely redacted in the publication, the report said. However, a response from an embassy official suggested that the letter had made officials “uneasy,” the Just.
“I want to be cautious and not overpromise,” wrote a Commerce Department official at the U.S. Embassy in Italy who was tasked with responding. “This is a Ukrainian company, and for our own protection, (the U.S. government) should not actively solicit the Italian government without the company going through (the Commerce Department’s) Advocacy Center.”
Hunter Biden’s tenure on Burisma’s board, which began in 2014, was scrutinized for years by Republican lawmakers who sought to link the president to his son’s foreign business dealings.
Last week, prosecutors wrote in court filings that Hunter Biden accepted cash from a Romanian businessman who was charged with corruption and sought to “influence U.S. authorities” during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president. Hunter Biden’s lawyers said the claim “was merely a reflection of the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing” used by House Republicans to attack their client and the president.
The Romania allegation is part of the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden, which is scheduled to go to trial next month. He is accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes – charges he must answer after he was found guilty earlier this year on three counts of lying about his drug use when buying a gun in 2018.
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