Hunter Biden is now facing another lawsuit as the New York Times sued the State Department on Monday as they seek to access US embassy emails that have something to do with Hunter.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, requests access “to emails sent by officials at the U.S. embassy in Romania between 2015 and 2019 that contain keywords including ‘Hunter Biden,'” Insider writes. Lawyers for the Times claim the State Department is stalling in responding to several Freedom of Information Act requests made by Times reporter Kenneth P. Vogel in June. Vogel had also asked for emails mentioning attorney Rudy Giuliani and Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden. Vogel covered the president’s son throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, often drawing ire from team Biden, adds Politico, who first reported the lawsuit’s existence.
The media company is trying to see if the embassy personnel did any special favors on behalf of business officials, including the president’s son and Bobulinski. The years where the emails were covered were also the exact year where Joe Biden was serving as vice president from 2015to 2016.
The first son’s former associates mentioned in the requests include Tony Bobulinski, who in October 2020 accused then-candidate Joe Biden of falsely claiming that he never discussed his son’s business dealings, saying, “I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden.”
Hunter Biden — who was involved in extensive and controversial overseas business dealings when his dad was vice president — was hired in 2015 by a Romanian real estate tycoon facing corruption charges, the Times reported in 2019.
According to Politico report:
“The FOIA requests also want information on former New York City Mayor Rudy G[iuliani], who was ordered by President Donald Trump to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine,” writes Politico. The Times, in a complaint in federal court in Manhattan, accuses the department of “delaying the fulfillment of repeated Freedom of Information Act requests that were submitted last year, commencing in June.”
According to Politico, the State Department informed the publication that the FOIA requests will be answered by April 15, 2023, or roughly by that date.
Specifically, according to Politico, “one of the Times’ goals in the suit appears to be discovering whether embassy officials performed favors on behalf of private businesses (including, presumably, that of the president’s son) that would raise questions about potential conflicts of interest and corruption.”
“Specifically, the request seeks records about “(1) the possible improper use of federal government resources to assist and advance private business interests with connections to United States government officials, (2) the possible evasion of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by those private business interests, and (3) the non-enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by the federal government in relation to those private business interests,” according to Politico.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings, such as those with Ukraine and China, were a source of controversy during the 2020 presidential election, though they were primarily covered by right-wing media outlets, which were criticized for ignoring, dismissing, or suppressing the controversies in the first place.
Sources: Wayne Dupree, Politico, New York Post, Daily Mail, The Week, Business Insider