Senate committee that investigated Joe Biden's Ukraine ties to look into fresh Hunter Biden allegations

A Senate committee will open an investigation into claims that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden lied about his interactions with his son, Hunter Biden, regarding his work with a Ukrainian company.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is chaired by GOP Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, announced on Wednesday that his committee would be reviewing new details regarding the relationship with the former vice president and his son, which stem from a new report published by the New York Post. The Biden campaign has flatly denied the allegations.

The committee confirmed to the publication that they will be working to verify the documents they reported on, which were found on an abandoned computer that supposedly belonged to the younger Biden and was given to Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, has worked with Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach, who “is spreading claims” about Joe Biden according to the intelligence community, and others to push allegations that Joe Biden had abused his power in Ukraine.

The computer, which was later handed over to the FBI, included an email that discussed a previously undisclosed possible introduction between Joe Biden and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email dated April 17, 2015, reads, but there are no details about what the “meet” entailed. It was unclear from the email whether it was sent before or after any meeting had taken place.

The former vice president has repeatedly said that he didn’t ask his son about “his overseas business dealings.”

Johnson and Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley have already spent months investigating Joe Biden and his son for alleged corruption. They released an 87-page joint report last month titled Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns.

[Read more: Biden denies ever meeting Ukrainian official at behest of son Hunter, slams Giuliani’s ‘conspiracy theories’]

Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates referenced their report in his response to the New York Post’s story. He told Politico: “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”

He added, “The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Giuliani – whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported – claimed to have such materials. Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”

They warned that Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma created concerns during the Obama administration, and it noted that George Kent, former acting deputy chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, “raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board” in early 2015.

The report alleges that “Kent’s concerns went unaddressed” and that he wrote an email to his colleagues stating that “the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine” in September 2016. The report also contends that senior State Department official Amos Hochstein “raised concerns with Vice President Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine” in October 2015.

The ranking members on those committees, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, claimed Johnson and Grassley “amplified a known Russian attack on our election” while Wyden called it a “sham investigation” and “attempted political hit job.”

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