Hunter Biden sought US government help to broker a lucrative energy deal while his father was vice president, but documents suspiciously revealing the plan surfaced just days after the elder Biden canceled his campaign.
For years, those documents were the focus of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, New York Times reports, but these were not made available until shortly after the president decided not to run.
They reveal that Hunter Biden, while on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and the son of the sitting vice president at the time, wrote at least one letter to the US ambassador to Italy, John R. Phillips, asking for help.
Hunter wanted to get in touch with the president of Tuscany, a region in central Italy where Burisma wanted to set up a geothermal energy business. It was clear that the company wanted to advance its interests in the region.
Now, just days after Joe Biden launched his re-election campaign, the timing of the State Department’s release of the long-awaited documents is raising questions.
Hunter Biden has sent at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy, asking for help for a Ukrainian gas company on whose board he sat to advance their goal of pursuing a geothermal project in the country
“Less than a week after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, the State Department finally released documents showing that Hunter Biden asked the U.S. government for help in closing a deal with Burisma when his father was vice president,” the House Oversight Committee on X wrote. “Coincidence?”
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri also wrote: “We’re not going to find out about this until after Joe Biden has already been thrown out. Total coincidence, I think.”
Another Senate Republican, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, wrote: “It’s not surprising that Burisma didn’t pay Hunter Biden a million dollars a year for his oil and gas expertise.”
“During the 2020 election, the corporate media and 51 former intelligence officials said Biden’s corruption evidence was Russian disinformation,” he continued, adding that it was “the height of election interference.”
A White House spokesman denied that the president was aware of his son’s contacts with the embassy in Italy.
Phillips, then the U.S. ambassador to Italy, told The New York Times that he did not recall Hunter Biden writing to him about Burisma, but acknowledged that he had received many letters during his time in office.
However, it remains unclear whether the US embassy in Italy attempted to assist Burisma in obtaining a permit for the Tuscan project.
The prevailing sentiment among critics was not so much anger at the young Biden asking for help on foreign deals, given that his father was the second most powerful person in the country, but more about the timing of the document’s release.
A spokesman said President Joe Biden was not aware of his son’s letter to the embassy in Italy about Burisma and its geothermal plans
The U.S. ambassador in Italy’s residence called Villa Taverna. Phillips, the ambassador at the time, said he did not recall receiving a letter from Hunter Biden, but admitted he had received a lot of correspondence at the time
According to the Times, they initially filed a FOIA with the State Department in June 2021, requesting documents related to Hunter.
When no response came from the agency for eight months, the newspaper decided to file a lawsuit.
Another 18 months or so passed before the State Department released thousands of pages related to the request.
The problem was that, according to the report, none of the many documents handed over had anything to do with Hunter Biden’s request to the US government for help.
The New York Times was at the time dissatisfied with the results of the more than two-year process and told the department that they wanted a more thorough investigation.
Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board in 2014 and was paid millions for his role at the company, despite having no background in the gas or energy sectors.
Hunter Biden has been the subject of numerous congressional investigations since his father took office, as Republicans have repeatedly attempted to cast his foreign business dealings as murky.
The paper alleged that the agency failed to release relevant files that were already public after Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop was released in 2020, suggesting FOIA compliance was flawed.
Apparently, the Times report revealed that the department had resumed its investigation into Hunter’s correspondence with the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
Few documents were turned over, even after the newspaper continued to exist, until President Biden decided not to run for a second term.
The week after Joe Biden withdrew from the race, the State Department gave the Times what it had been asking for years: the crucial communications between Hunter and U.S. government officials.
A ministry spokesman told the Times that the timing of the documents’ release was coincidental.
The contents of the correspondence show that around the same time, Hunter Biden wrote a letter to the president of the Tuscany region, in which he also sent an email to the US ambassador to Italy.
Hunter Biden notoriously left his laptop at this store before its contents were published ahead of the 2020 election
However, it appears that the copy of the letter was completely blacked out by the Foreign Office, preventing the journalist from finding out what was discussed in detail in the letter.
The agency alleged that the omissions were intended to protect individuals’ privacy, attorney-client privilege, or the private government process.
According to a source involved in the Tuscany project, the project failed before drilling even began.
