Media reports claim that Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, went to the U.S. State Department seeking help to get an energy contract for a project in Italy during the period when his father was serving as vice president under President Barack Obama.
The reports allege Hunter wanted help from John R. Phillips, who was then the U.S. ambassador to Italy. Hunter wanted the intervention to help the interests of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, it is claimed. Hunter was a board member of the company at the time of the alleged behavior.
The accusations are based on a huge collection of documents that were only released by the Biden White House after the president unexpectedly dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in July. Outlets first tried to get the records under the Freedom of Information Act, but eventually had to sue the Biden administration after they stalled for eight months. The State Department, unsurprisingly, claimed that their release of the records was merely coincidental and had nothing to do with Joe Biden exiting the 2024 race.
True to form, the federal agency appears to have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of FOIA law. For example, the State Department released a “letter” from Hunter to ambassador Phillips. But the entire document, all of it, was redacted. It brings to mind the hundreds of pages the Centers for Disease control eventually released related to the question of the heart inflammation potentially caused by vaccines. Every single page released was redacted.
The White House and Joe Biden have continually claimed that the president has had nothing to do with his son Hunter’s business interests, despite much evidence to the contrary. They are today claiming the same thing, that the elder Biden was unaware that his son had asked the State Department for helping getting a contract awarded to Burisma.
The agency seems to have been gunshy about acceding to Hunter’s request. One document in the now-released files quotes an unnamed Commerce Department official who wrote that the department wanted to be cautious about “promising too much.”
