Hunter Biden asked US ambassador for help with Ukrainian company Burisma, lawyer confirms

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, tried to enlist the support of the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 to arrange a business meeting on behalf of Burisma for a potential energy deal, according to his lawyer.

The New York Times was the first to report on the rapprochement, which occurred during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president.

In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday evening, Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell characterized Hunter Biden’s letter to John Phillips, the U.S. ambassador to Rome at the time, seeking a “simple introduction” as “normal and proper practice.”

“There was no meeting, no project materialized, no request was ever sought in the United States and only a presentation was requested in Italy,” Lowell said.

The New York Times reported that it had obtained the records related to Hunter Biden’s request after a lengthy legal battle with the State Department. The newspaper said in Tuesday’s news article that it initially submitted the request for these records in June 2021 and then filed a lawsuit when the department failed to turn them over.

The Times also reported that a State Department official said the timing of the release of these particular documents, just weeks after Joe Biden ended his presidential campaign, was a coincidence.

The actual text of Hunter Biden’s 2016 letter to Ambassador John Phillips was not included in the documents obtained by the Times. But according to Lowell, Hunter Biden contacted the embassy to see “if they could make a simple presentation of Burisma’s geothermal venture to the president of Tuscany, where such projects were being considered.”

The response Hunter Biden received from an embassy aide suggested unease with official U.S. cooperation.

“I want to be careful not to overpromise,” a Rome-based Commerce Department official told Hunter Biden, according to the Times. “This is a Ukrainian company, and just to protect ourselves,[the U.S. government]should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the[Commerce Department’s]Advocacy Center.”

Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board for nearly five years and earned more than $2 million from the energy company during that time, according to court records filed as part of his California tax case.

This latest revelation follows recent allegations that Hunter Biden sought to leverage his proximity to power for business gain.

Last week, prosecutors alleged in court filings that the younger Biden accepted payments from a Romanian businessman who wanted him to “influence U.S. government agencies” while his father was vice president.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers have criticized the allegations involving the Romanian businessman in court documents.

“The special counsel’s unnecessary change of tactics simply reflects the baseless and false allegations of foreign wrongdoing that have been promoted by House Republicans to use Mr. Biden’s proper business activities in Romania and elsewhere to attack him and his father,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote.

In related news, Hunter Biden first discussed his role at Burisma in an interview with ABC News in October 2019. At the time, he acknowledged that he “probably” would not have been offered the position at Burisma had his last name not been Biden, but insisted that he “did absolutely nothing wrong” by taking an overseas job while his father was vice president.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.