Hunter Biden asked the U.S. State Department for help as he attempted to arrange a deal for a Ukrainian gas company in Italy during his father’s vice presidency, according to a report.
In 2016, Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy seeking help on behalf of the company, Burisma, where he was a board member, according to The New York Times. At the time, Burisma was having problems getting regulatory approval for a geothermal energy project in Tuscany, a businessman involved in the project told the Times.
Biden asked “various people” including John Phillips—the U.S. ambassador in Rome at the time—if they could set up an introduction between Burisma and the president of the Tuscany region, according to Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell. “No meeting occurred, no project materialized, no request for anything in the U.S. was ever sought and only an introduction in Italy was requested,” Lowell told the Times. He further described the letter as a “proper request.”
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It’s not clear if the U.S. Embassy ever did help Burisma, and the energy project never came to fruition, according to the businessman involved.
The Times reported it learned of Biden’s previously unreported overture on behalf of Burisma after a protracted legal battle with the State Department. The newspaper said it first filed a request for public records in 2021 and later sued after no records had been released 18 months later.
A State Department spokeswoman suggested to the newspaper the timing of the release of the new documents related to Biden—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 records were planned for release weeks before the president revealed his decision to drop out of the race.
The Times further cited a backlog of records requests at the department and the political impartiality of the civil servants responsible for handling them in concluding that it is “unlikely” the release could have been timed for after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race “since that news was closely held until the last minute.”
The text of Hunter Biden’s letter to Phillips appeared to have been entirely redacted in the release, according to the report. However, the reply that was sent by an embassy aide suggested the letter had made officials “uneasy,” according to the Times.
“I want to be careful about promising too much,” wrote a Commerce Department official based in the U.S. Embassy in Italy who was tasked with responding. “This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, [the U.S. government] should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the [Department of Commerce] Advocacy Center.”
Hunter Biden’s time on the board of Burisma, which began in 2014, has for years been scrutinized by Republican lawmakers seeking to connect the president with his son’s foreign business dealings.
Last week, prosecutors wrote in court filings that Hunter Biden took cash from a Romanian businessman facing corruption charges who wanted to “influence U.S. government agencies” while Joe Biden was vice president. Hunter Biden’s lawyers said the claim “merely echoes the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing” used by House Republicans to attack their client and the president.
The Romania allegation came as part of Hunter Biden’s tax evasion case, which is set to go to trial next month. He’s accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes—allegations which he will answer after being separately convicted earlier this year on three felony charges for lying about his drug use when buying a gun in 2018.
