Hunter Biden sought a meeting with his president-elect dad’s pick for secretary of state shortly after joining the board of a controversial Ukrainian energy company in 2015, according to a report Tuesday.
Biden emailed Antony Blinken, then the US deputy secretary of state, to request the sit-down, Fox News said.
“Have a few minutes next week to grab a cup of coffee? I know you are impossibly busy, but would like to get your advice on a couple of things,” Hunter Biden reportedly wrote on May 22, 2015.
Blinken replied, “Absolutely,” and the two exchanged several more messages regarding the time and place, Fox News said.
On May 27, 2015, Blinken’s assistant emailed Biden with Blinken’s schedule for that day, which included a 3:30 p.m. meeting between the two men, Fox News said.
But the meeting never took place because Biden’s older brother, Beau, was terminally ill with brain cancer and died three days later, The Washington Post reported last year.
Biden and Blinken — a longtime aide to Biden’s father and a family friend — later met in July 2015 and “spoke about Beau and the Biden family” but they didn’t discuss Burisma, a person familiar with the meeting told the Post.
The emails between Biden and Blinken were obtained last year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, Fox News said.
They were the subject of a November 2019 request for additional information from the State Department by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), according to Fox News.
It’s unclear what came of that request.
In September, Grassley and Johnson released an 87-page report that claimed President Barack Obama’s administration ignored “glaring warning signs” when Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma on May 12, 2015.
The job — for which Biden was paid “as much as $50,000 per month” — “created an immediate potential conflict of interest” because Biden’s father, Joe Biden, was involved in US policy toward Ukraine as Obama’s vice president, according to the report.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden formally announced his plan to nominate Blinken for secretary of state, saying Blinken would “rebuild morale and trust in the State Department, or where his career in government began.”
In addition, Blinken “is ready on Day One” and “starts off with the kind of relationships around the world that many of his predecessors have had to build over the years,” the president-elect added.
Neither Hunter Biden’s lawyer nor Joe Biden’s transition team immediately responded to requests for comment.