A consultant for Burisma Holdings and associate of Hunter Biden reached out to the State Department to meet about “troubling events” in Ukraine.
Emails released by the State Department show communications between Sally Painter, a consulting representative for the Ukrainian gas company, and William Russo, the top aide of former Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken in 2016.
In one email in June, Painter requested a meeting with Blinker to discuss events in Ukraine.
“Per my conversation with Tony at the Truman event, Karen Tramontano and I would like to have a brief coffee with Tony at his earliest convenience regarding some troubling events we are seeing n [sic] Ukraine. (He said yes),” Painter wrote to Russo, who currently works as an adviser to the Joe Biden presidential campaign, in an email. “Karen was President Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff and we are just back from Kiev. Many thanks for your help.”
The email exchange between Painter and Russo does not mention Burisma by name, raising questions about what specifically they discussed.
The Daily Caller reports Tramontano, who was mentioned in the email as Painter’s partner at Blue Star Strategies, previously reached out to the State Department to specifically discuss the Burisma, according to federal records. She argued the company was not corrupt, contrary to what the United States suspected. “According to Tramontano there is no evidence of corruption, has been no hearing or process, and evidence to the contrary has not been considered,” a State Department official wrote in an email.
In 2019, the New York Times found Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, connected Blue Star Strategies with Burisma in order to fight allegations of corruption against the firm. State Department records, according to the Daily Caller, also show Hunter Biden meeting with Blinker in May 2015 to obtain his “advice on a couple of things,” to which Blinken said he would “absolutely” be willing to meet. It is unclear what the two discussed in their meeting.
Hunter Biden and Painter first connected when the two worked as directors of the Truman National Security Project, a left-leaning nonprofit group that educates activists on matters of foreign policy. In 2016, the Truman National Security Project hosted Blinken at a forum, reportedly where Painter first requested a meeting.
The controversy follows Joe Biden’s public boast that he pressured Ukraine to fire a controversial top prosecutor, whose office had investigated Burisma owner and Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.
The former vice president has repeatedly denied doing so in order to benefit his son, who was on Burisma’s board, in the face of corruption allegations by President Trump and his allies, which became the center of an impeachment effort.
