For years, some of us have written about the Biden family’s multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation and the Justice Department’s refusal to charge Hunter Biden with being an unregistered foreign agent. Now, years later, The New York Times has found evidence suggesting that the former president’s son was acting as a foreign agent as early as the Obama administration, when his father was vice president.
Last August, the New York Times ran a story about Hunter Biden seeking help from the government for his client, the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. A recent follow-up story had damaging new details:
Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.
The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member…
The State Department did not release the actual text of the letter.
That is precisely what many of us have been writing about in asking why Hunter Biden was not charged with being an unregistered foreign agent, as Paul Manafort, Bob Menendez and others were under similar circumstances.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) covers anyone acting as ‘agent of a foreign principal,’ including but not limited to (1) attempting to influence federal officials or the public on domestic or foreign policy or the political or public interests in favor of a foreign country; (2) collecting or disbursing money and or other things of value within the United States; or (3) representing the interests of the foreign principal before U.S. Government officials or agencies.
It is sweeping. So is the definition of what a ‘foreign principal’ encompasses, including ‘a foreign government, a foreign political party, any person outside the United States (except U.S. citizens who are domiciled within the United States), and any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.’
As I previously wrote, Special Counsel Robert Mueller seemed to charge by the gross under the act. He hit a line of Trump associates with such allegations from Manafort to Michael Flynn to George Papadopoulos to Rick Gates. The Justice Department used FARA to conduct searches on the homes and files of former Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani, Republican attorney Victoria Toensing and others.
However, the Justice Department and Special Counsel David Weiss seemed to tie themselves into knots to avoid tripping the wire on FARA even as it discussed Hunter Biden’s work for foreign clients.
The government also resisted FOIA requests from the Times and other media. More from the above article:
The request was initially filed under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, in June 2021. After nearly eight months, the State Department had not released any records, and The Times sued. About 18 months later, the department moved to close the case after releasing thousands of pages of records — none of which shed light on Hunter Biden’s outreach to the U.S. government.
The Times challenged the thoroughness of the search, noting that the department had failed to produce responsive records contained in a cache of files connected to a laptop that Mr. Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The department resumed the search and periodic productions, but had produced few documents related to Mr. Biden until the week after his father ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris for the Democratic nomination.
Now we have a copy of a key letter from Hunter Biden that gives us an insight into the evidence buried for years:
The State Department last week released a letter he wrote while his father was serving as vice president in which he sought assistance from the U.S. government for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
In the previously unpublished June 2016 letter on Burisma letterhead to the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Mr. Biden requested ‘support and guidance’ in arranging a meeting with an Italian official to resolve regulatory hurdles to geothermal energy projects Burisma was pursuing in the Tuscany region…
The letter requested help arranging a meeting between Burisma officials and Enrico Rossi, the president of the Tuscany regional government at the time, ‘to introduce geothermal projects led by Burisma Group, to highlight their social and economic benefits for local communities and develop a common action plan that would lead to further development of the Tuscany Region.’
How could any Justice Department official, let alone a special counsel, read that letter and not see the glaring disconnect between the handling of the case involving Joe Biden’s son and others like Manafort?
The letter references a trip on which Hunter Biden, as was his pattern, used official travel with his father to make these business connections. The letter mentions meeting a key ambassador on Air Force Two as he seeks assistance for his client.
The ambassador then sent a follow-up letter saying he knew the president of Tuscany and identified a Commerce Department official working at the U.S. embassy who could help ‘see where our interests may overlap.’
It was another example of alleged influence peddling through his father and work for a foreign client in lobbying the government.
During this period, the Justice Department seemed to be on a hair-trigger for FARA charges. Yet, when it came to Hunter Biden, the entire department seemed composed of legal Sgt. Schultzes.
Many in the media attacked those of us who have been writing about this corruption stretching back to the Obama administration. Many simply insisted that there was no evidence, while taking no steps to find out. While the media was unrelenting in investigating Trump allegations of Russian collusion and business improprieties, it took a largely passive stance in pursuing this story.
Even The New York Times, which can be credited with pursuing this FOIA information, did comparably little with the ample evidence of corruption by the Bidens in securing millions through influence peddling.
What remains is a corruption scandal involving not only what the Bidens did but also what the Justice Department did not do over this extended period. It appears to heed the advice not of whistleblowers but politicians like former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) that ‘everybody needs to back off’ the influence-peddling story.
Of course, Joe Biden ultimately broke his repeated promise not to pardon his son. What was most notable, however, was that not only did he pardon him for any crimes from human trafficking to tax evasion but also for a period running from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024.
This letter explains why such a sweeping, extended pardon was needed. Yet, in the end, the greatest indictment from this scandal was of the Justice Department itself.