The former US diplomat in Kiev has warned the State Department that Hunter Biden’s business in Ukraine

Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine while his father was still vice president ‘undermines’ anti-corruption efforts in the country, a senior US diplomat stationed in Kyiv has warned in a classified email sent to the department. of American State in 2016.

The email, obtained by Just the News, was published a day after The New York Times sued the State Department for allegedly withholding emails involving Hunter Biden that were sent or received by officials. of the United States Embassy in Romania between 2015 and 2019 involving Hunter Biden. .

The email, dated November 22, 2016, was authored by George Kent, who was then Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Ukraine. The Harvard-educated diplomat detailed a discussion of a ‘saga’ surrounding the case against Mykola Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian natural resources minister and founder of Burisma Holdings, who paid Hunter Biden $1million a year to serve on its board of directors, according to the email.

Kent was one of the Democrats’ key witnesses in their first successful impeachment bid for former President Donald Trump in 2019.

However, his email said the “real issue in my view was that someone in Washington needed to quietly engage Vice President Biden and say that having his son Hunter on the Burisma board was undermining the anti-Biden message. -corruption of the vice-president and that we are advancing in Ukraine. ‘

Kent went on to say that “Ukrainians heard a message from us and then saw a different set of behaviors, with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known to break industry rules. oil/gas”.

Kent previously testified behind closed doors that he raised concerns about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Burisma in 2015, according to reports.

Former US diplomat George Kent (left) wrote in a classified email that ‘Hunter Biden’s presence on Burisma’s board undermined the vice president’s anti-corruption message and we were moving forward in Ukraine’

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The classified email was sent to a former State Department official, Jorgan Andrews, and others whose names are withheld. He was not produced during impeachment proceedings in 2019, Just the News reported.

Kent previously testified behind closed doors that he raised concerns about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Burisma in 2015, according to reports.

The email, labeled confidential, was sent to former State Department official Jorgan Andrews and others whose names are withheld. He was not produced during the impeachment proceedings, Just the News reported.

Monday, the The New York Times has sued the State Department for allegedly dragging its feet in handing over emails from Romanian embassy officials linked to Hunter Biden and his former associate Tony Bobulinski.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan, targets emails dating from 2015 to 2019. The Times alleges the State Department is not responding in a timely manner to its Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA). When The Times asked when the State Department would respond to the request, the newspaper was told to expect a response on April 15, 2023, according to Politico.

The Times appears to be investigating whether embassy staff did special favors on behalf of trade officials, including the president’s son and Bobulinski. Joe Biden served as vice president for two of the years covered by the emails, 2015-2016.

Emails about Hunter’s abandoned laptop, obtained by DailyMail.com in 2021, reveal how Joe Biden’s son and his colleagues leveraged their connections to the US government and mounted a propaganda campaign to graft Romanian tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), anyone defending foreign entities to U.S. government officials or acting as a publicist for a foreign entity in the United States must register with a public registry at the Department of Justice. .

However, an exception applies to attorneys representing a client in a foreign court case, who are not required to register under FARA.

Emails show that Hunter’s colleagues Christopher Boies and Michael Gottlieb – partners at law firm Boies Schiller Flexner – were seeking to arrange meetings with the US ambassador to Romania after discussing between them whether he would intervene in the case of Popoviciu.

Hunter brought in political heavyweight and family friend Louis Freeh, the former FBI director, to use his contacts with US law enforcement to Popoviciu’s advantage, and was offered a commission reference accordingly.

Hunter and his colleagues also discussed a media campaign, including with a major US publication, the Wall Street Journal, to support their client who was later convicted of bribery.

None of them were required to register for this work under FARA, due to various exemptions, including those for lawyers of foreign defendants.

The FOIA is also seeking information on Rudy Giuliani, who was sent by former President Trump to dig up information about Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine.

Giuliani told the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s laptop bomb.

In 2020, Senate Republicans investigated Hunter Biden’s $50,000-a-month seat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, then mired in corruption, while his father helped shape policy towards Kiev.

The case was at the center of Trump’s first impeachment trial, accusing the president of pressuring Ukrainian officials to investigate Hunter’s business dealings. Giving the appearance of a conflict of interest, Hunter’s board seat alarmed some State Department officials.

The elder Biden mobilized $1 billion in aid to Ukraine to force the country to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who at the time was investigating Burisma. But the then vice president’s office said the United States wanted Shokin out because he was not investigating corruption among the country’s politicians.

But while the investigation found no evidence that Biden, as vice president, improperly manipulated politics in favor of his son.

The Republicans’ investigation also revealed that Hunter had received huge sums of money – some in the seven-figure range – from strangers in China, Russia and elsewhere while his father was in power.

Politico reports that the FOIA request threatens to rekindle an old feud between the Biden White House and Times money and influence reporter Ken Vogel, who led coverage of the president’s son.

Then-deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield wrote to Times editor Dean Bacquet and accused Vogel of “gross journalistic malpractice”.

Then-rapid response director Andrew Bates also tussled with Vogel on Twitter.

“Philadelphia SCOOP: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel) is a COWARD,” Bates tweeted in February 2020.

Bates claimed that Vogel’s report on Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine in May 2019 “for the first time amplified this misinformation campaign in the general public.”

Emails found on the laptop indicated an effort by Hunter to arrange a 2015 meeting between Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company. The FBI had since seized the laptop from the owner of the Delaware computer repair shop, who says Hunter dropped it off in 2019 and never came to pick it up.