Hunter Biden sought U.S. government assistance for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma while his father was vice president, according to a report from The New York Times. The Times article stated Hunter Biden wrote a letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016, trying to get Burisma help for a lucrative geothermal energy project in Tuscany. 

The Times obtained documents from the State Department that revealed embassy officials in Italy were uneasy with the vice president’s son requesting help on behalf of a foreign company.

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A Commerce Department official based in Rome ultimately responded.

“I want to be careful about promising too much,” the official wrote. “This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, U.S.G. should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the D.O.C. Advocacy Center,” the official wrote.  

Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said it was a proper request and that Biden had reached out to multiple people for help. 

“No meeting occurred, no project materialized, no request for anything in the U.S. was ever sought and only an introduction in Italy was requested,” Lowell said in a statement to the Times.  

The Times said it obtained the documents as part of a Freedom of Information Act request dating back to June 2021. The news organization said the State Department was initially unresponsive, so it sued. The Times said it received some documents and ultimately kept pressing until the department released what it was looking for the week after President Biden ended his presidential campaign.

A State Department spokesperson told the Times the timing was coincidental. 

Hunter Biden’s position on the board of Burisma has followed him and his father for years. According to reports that cite documents on his laptop, Hunter was paid $1 million a year to sit on the board while his father was vice president and head of U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine. For years, President Biden denied that he ever spoke to his son about his business dealings but congressional testimony, documents and communications showed that was not true.

Hunter Biden’s trial for a tax evasion case is scheduled to begin Sept. 9. In a recent court filing, prosecutors alleged Biden accepted payments from a Romanian businessman who sought to “influence U.S. government agencies.”