Hunter Biden tapped US officials to help Burisma sidestep regulations, red tape in Italy

Hunter Biden reached out to a US ambassador for help with a business deal involving the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2016, where he was a board member. His father, Joe Biden, was vice president at the time.

Hunter sent a letter to then-US Ambassador to Italy, John Phillips, asking for help setting up a meeting with a local Italian official. The idea was to get past some red tape that was slowing down Burisma’s geothermal energy projects in Tuscany. “Support and guidance,” is what he asked for, according to The New York Times.

Biden wrote that Burisma was “experiencing certain difficulties obtaining authorisations that are issued by regional authorities” to work on three geothermal power projects tied to a €175 million deal.

The New York Times had to sue the State Department to get the letter and other documents, which were finally released last week. In the letter, Hunter also wrote, “It was great seeing you in Rome recently,” which seemed to be about a visit the year before when he stayed at Phillips’s place.

The documents have sparked more talk about Hunter possibly using his father’s position to help his business dealings overseas. Last summer, a White House official said then-President Obama didn’t know Hunter had contacted the embassy in Italy on behalf of Burisma.

Some Republicans say this looks like a conflict of interest, especially since the Obama administration was also telling Ukrainian officials to crack down on corruption in the government and energy sector at the same time. It appears embassy staff were not comfortable with Hunter’s request either: “I want to be careful about promising too much,” a commerce department official based in Rome wrote, according to the Times.

Hunter’s lawyer defended the letter, saying it was a “proper request, which was no different than hundreds of similar requests for introductions that businesses make to ambassadors every year.”

Hunter, now 55, was convicted last year of gun charges and pleaded guilty to tax crimes connected to money he made from Burisma and other international deals. Before leaving office in January, President Joe Biden gave his son a full pardon. That decision drew backlash from Republicans and even some Democrats.