Hunter Biden set up a meeting between a senior official at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and Joe Biden while he was still vice president, according to a new report, potentially contradicting claims from the 2020 Democratic nominee that he never discussed overseas business with his son.
The previously undisclosed possible introduction between Joe Biden and Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, which is the company Hunter Biden also served on, came to light through an email from Pozharskyi to the younger Biden obtained by the New York Post. The email, and other information, was discovered on a computer purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden that was left at a repair shop in Delaware.
“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 additional details about what the “meet” entailed. It was unclear from the email whether it was sent before such a meeting may have happened or after.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” the former vice president said last September. “Here’s what I know — Trump should be investigated.”
Hunter’s role with Burisma has long been scrutinized by Republicans, and it ultimately led to President Trump urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate claims of corruption, which spurred his impeachment in the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal in the Senate.
The shop owner told the New York Post that he made a copy of the computer’s hard drive and provided it to a lawyer for Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon alerted the outlet about the hard drive’s existence in September, and Giuliani handed over a copy of it on Sunday.
The Biden campaign, in a statement to Politico, denied that such a meeting with Pozharskyi ever took place, and hit the New York Post over Giuliani’s involvement in the story.
“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story,” Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates told Politico. “They certainly never raised that Rudy 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.”
Giuliani was a staunch defender of Trump throughout the impeachment process and worked with Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach and others to push allegations that Joe Biden had abused his power in Ukraine.
Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in early August warning that Russia is “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Biden, and that Derkach “is spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine” Biden. The same statement also said China “prefers” that Trump not win reelection and is “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020.” The counterintelligence official also said Iran “seeks to undermine” Trump’s presidency.
The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Derkach this summer. There is no evidence that the leaked emails from Hunter Biden and Burisma were connected to Derkach or Russia.
During a phone call last summer, Zelensky expressed interest in purchasing anti-tank weaponry, and Trump asked Zelensky “to do us a favor though” by looking into the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and possible Ukrainian meddling in 2016. Trump also urged Zelensky to investigate “the other thing,” referring to allegations of corruption involving Joe and Hunter Biden.
Trump and his Republican allies have questioned why Burisma gave Hunter a high-paying position despite him having little experience in the energy sector and a well-documented problem with drug use. Trump, Giuliani, and other allies claim Biden improperly used his position as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to protect his son from an investigation into Burisma. Democrats deny there was any wrongdoing, arguing that the claims of corruption are political smears. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire Shokin, who was criticized by many in the West for not doing enough to crack down on corruption.
A September report by Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson and Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley warned that Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the board of Burisma created concerns during the Obama administration. The report says 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.
Bates also noted that the investigation did not come up with conclusive information of a conspiracy.
“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,” he said. “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”
