The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly had evidence that former Vice President Joe Biden met with an executive from Burisma introduced by his son, Hunter, since the week in December 2019 when the House impeached the president.
The New York Post reported on Wednesday that an abandoned laptop hard drive contained evidence that Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of the corruption-plagued Ukrainian company, made the introduction to then-Vice President Biden in 2015.
The evidence: an email from Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter Biden for the “opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together” in Washington, D.C.
Less than a year later, in March 2016, Biden would pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor with jurisdiction over investigations into Burisma, threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.
Joe Biden has denied speaking with his son about his foreign business — a claim his son has contradicted.
The new evidence comes from an abandoned laptop that was left at a Delaware repair shop and seized by the FBI on Dec. 17, 2019 — the day before Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held the vote to impeach President Donald Trump.
The store owner had contacted the FBI, but made copy of the hard drive before yielding it. He later provided that copy to Robert Costello, an attorney for former NewYork City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is an attorney for the president, the Post reported.
The Post also noted that other materials, including family photographs, support the laptop’s relationship to Hunter Biden.
The issue of Joe Biden’s intervention in Ukraine — and his conflict of interest — was crucial to the impeachment.
President Trump had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into allegations concerning “Biden’s son.” He was then impeached, based on a letter from a “whistleblower” who had not actually heard the call between Trump and Zelensky.
The president claimed he had been acting in the national interest; Democrats alleged he had abused his power to smear a rival.
It is not clear why the FBI never released or acted on the evidence it reportedly seized, which supported Trump’s case.
During the Senate impeachment trial earlier this year, Republicans suggested that they would allow the White House to call Hunter Biden and perhaps Joe Biden as witnesses if Democrats insisted on calling more witnesses than the House had seen.
Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Burisma in 2014, a conflict of interest that briefly prompted reporters to raise questions with the Obama administration at the time. The impeachment inquiry revealed that other federal officials tried to raised the issue, without success.
A report released by Senate Republicans earlier this year noted suggested that Joe Biden may have lied about discussing his son’s business dealings and about being warned about a potential conflict of interest.
Critics have accused Joe Biden of using his office to provide business opportunities for his family, which he has steadfastly denied.
Hunter Biden made an appearance at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, vouching for his father’s honesty.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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