For years, some of us have written about the Biden family’s multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation and the Justice Department’s refusal to charge Hunter Biden with being an unregistered foreign agent. Now, years later, the New York Times has found evidence suggesting that Hunter Biden was acting as a foreign agent as early as the Obama Administration, when his Dad was Vice President.
Last August, the New York Times ran a story about Hunter seeking help from the government for his client Burisma. Ken Vogel just ran a follow-up story with damaging new details:
Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. government for a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, according to newly released records and interviews.
The records, which the Biden administration had withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where he was a board member…
The State Department did not release the actual text of the letter.
That is precisely what many of us have been writing about in asking why Hunter was not charged with being an unregistered foreign agent as was the case under cases from Paul Manafort to Bob Menendez.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) covers anyone acting as “agent of a foreign principal,” including but not limited to (1) attempting to influence federal officials or the public on domestic or foreign policy or the political or public interests in favor of a foreign country; (2) collecting or disbursing money and or other things of value within the United States; or (3) representing the interests of the foreign principal before U.S. Government officials or agencies.
It is sweeping. So is the definition of what a “foreign principal” encompasses, including “a foreign government, a foreign political party, any person outside the United States (except U.S. citizens who are domiciled within the United States), and any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.”
As I previously wrote, special counsel Robert Mueller seemed to charge by the gross under the act. He hit a line of Trump associates with such allegations from Manafort to Michael Flynn to George Papadopoulos to Rick Gates. The Justice Department used FARA to conduct searches on the homes and files of former Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani, Republican counsel Victoria Toensing and others.
However, the Justice Department and Special Counsel David Weiss seemed to tie themselves into knots to avoid tripping the wire on FARA even as it discussed Hunter’s work for foreign clients.
The government also resisted FOIA requests from the Times and other media. Vogel wrote:
The request was initially filed under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, in June 2021. After nearly eight months, the State Department had not released any records, and The Times sued. About 18 months later, the department moved to close the case after releasing thousands of pages of records — none of which shed light on Hunter Biden’s outreach to the U.S. government.
The Times challenged the thoroughness of the search, noting that the department had failed to produce responsive records contained in a cache of files connected to a laptop that Mr. Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. The department resumed the search and periodic productions, but had produced few documents related to Mr. Biden until the week after his father ended his re-election campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris for the Democratic nomination.
The foreign part is hopefully NOT covered by his invalid blanket pardon!
Tie it to the Big Guy and lock them all up!