Hunter Biden requested the help of the US ambassador for the Ukrainian company Burisma, the lawyer confirms

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, tried to get support from the US ambassador to Italy in 2016 to arrange a business meeting on behalf of Burisma for a possible energy deal, according to his lawyer.

The New York Times first reported the overture, which took place during Joe Biden’s time as vice president.

In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday night, Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, characterized Hunter Biden’s letter to John Phillips, the US ambassador to Rome at the time, seeking a “simple introduction” as a “normal practice and appropriate”. “

“No meeting took place, no project materialized, nothing was ever requested in the U.S. and only an introduction to Italy was requested,” Lowell said.

The New York Times reported that it secured records related to Hunter Biden’s claim after a lengthy legal battle with the State Department. The newspaper said in Tuesday’s news article that it originally filed the request for those records in June 2021 and later sued 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 coincidental.

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 he could make a simple presentation of Burisma’s geothermal company to the president of Tuscany, where such projects were being considered.”

Hunter Biden’s response from an embassy adviser suggested unease with official US cooperation.

“I want to be careful about promising too much,” a Commerce Department official told Hunter Biden in Rome, according to the Times. “This is a Ukrainian company, and just to protect us, (the U.S. government) should not be actively advocating with the Italian government without the company going through the (Commerce Department) Advocacy Center.”

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

This latest revelation builds on recent allegations that Hunter Biden tried to use his proximity to power for commercial gain.

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

Hunter Biden’s lawyers criticized the allegations related to the Romanian businessman in the court files.

“The special counsel’s unnecessary change of tack only echoes the false and baseless 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 addressed his role at Burisma in an interview with ABC News in October 2019. He admitted at the time that he would “probably not” have been offered the role at Burisma if his name of the family would not have been Biden, but he insisted that he “did nothing wrong” by accepting work abroad while his father was vice president.

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