Hunter Biden once lobbied the American government on behalf of a foreign client, a disclosure that comes years after the first son insisted he never tried to cash in on his family name. 

In 2016, Biden wrote to the then-American ambassador to Italy, John Phillips, in order to try to set up an introduction between the founder of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky — who had given Biden and a business partner board seats on his company — and the president of the Tuscany region of Italy. 

The document was obtained by the New York Times, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act request, though it says it did not receive it until recently. Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, told the Times that no meeting ever occurred, and that Biden’s letter to the ambassador was standard lobbying practice — not evidence of improper political influence as a result of his last name being Biden. 

While the text of Biden’s letter to the ambassador was not released, government officials did discuss the potential ramifications of aiding the then-vice president’s son’s business dealings abroad. 

“I want to be careful about promising too much,” one Commerce Department official wrote to a colleague about Biden’s request. “This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, [the American government] should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the [Commerce Department] Advocacy Center.”

Republicans have long accused members of the Biden family — mostly the first son — of serving foreign interests without registering with the government, which would constitute a violation of federal law. For more than a year, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has been investigating what they call the Biden family’s “influence-peddling scheme.”

Biden has already been convicted of purchasing a firearm while actively addicted to a controlled substance, and is expected to go to trial on September 9 for failing to pay more than $1.2 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019 — the same years he was using drugs and serving on Burisma’s board, where he was making more than $80,000 up until his father left the vice presidency. 

A federal investigator confirmed to the New York Sun that during the course of their probe into Biden’s tax records, they did look into whether he had violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act — the law the governs when American lobbyists must declare their work for foreign entities. 

At the tax trial in September, a witness is expected to be called who will testify further to Biden’s advocacy on behalf of foreign clients. The special counsel who is prosecuting Biden, David Weiss, announced in a court filing that an unnamed business associate will tell the court about Biden’s work for a Romanian businessman who was under investigation in his home country.