The State Department last week released a letter that Hunter Biden wrote while his father was serving as vice president in which he sought assistance from the U.S. government for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
In the previously unpublished June 2016 letter on Burisma letterhead to the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Mr. Biden requested “support and guidance” in arranging a meeting with an Italian official to resolve regulatory hurdles to geothermal energy projects Burisma was pursuing in the Tuscany region.
In a response letter also released by the State Department last week, the ambassador, John R. Phillips, indicated that he had dispatched a Commerce Department official to assist with the request.
The letters shed more light on an episode The New York Times had previously revealed.
Mr. Biden began his letter by referring to an interaction with the ambassador, writing, “It was great seeing you in Rome recently.”
The letter did not mention then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., nor did it specify when Hunter Biden saw the ambassador in Rome. He had traveled there at least twice with his father in the preceding months.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Phillips said that he did not view the letter as an effort to invoke the elder Mr. Biden in order to compel the embassy to help Burisma. Rather, Mr. Phillips said, he interpreted it as a reference to a Biden family trip to Rome over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2015, during which the younger Mr. Biden had spent time with the ambassador.
The Bidens stayed for roughly three days in the official U.S. ambassador’s residence in Rome, the 15-century Villa Taverna, according to Mr. Phillips, who had known the elder Mr. Biden. Mr. Phillips said that he was out of town for much of the visit, but returned to Rome for a meeting with the elder Mr. Biden and the Italian prime minister, before joining the Bidens for the flight back to Washington aboard the vice president’s plane, where he spoke to Hunter Biden.
A representative for Hunter Biden said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Biden “was truly grateful for the kindness he and his family had been shown,” and that his mention of the visit “was heartfelt appreciation for courtesy and comfort.” A lawyer for Mr. Biden had previously described the letter to Mr. Phillips as a “proper request, which was no different that hundreds of similar requests for introductions that businesses make to ambassadors every year.”
In his response, Mr. Phillips, who served as ambassador to Italy for most of President Barack Obama’s second term, wrote to Hunter Biden that “it seems like yesterday that you were in Rome.”
In his comments to The Times, Mr. Phillips said that he did not know Hunter Biden well, adding: “I don’t think I met him beyond that trip he made to Italy where I spent time with him only on the plane flying back to Washington.”
Mr. Phillips said he did not recall Mr. Biden’s letter, but noted that it would be the type of inquiry he “would pay attention to.”
A Burisma representative did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for former President Biden declined to comment.
Last summer, a Biden White House spokesman said the elder Mr. Biden was not aware when he was vice president that his son had contacted the United States Embassy in Italy on behalf of Burisma.
Mr. Biden’s outreach to Mr. Phillips appeared to make other embassy officials uneasy, The Times previously reported.
Some in the Obama administration saw Mr. Biden’s service on the board of the company as a potential conflict of interest, as it overlapped with his father prodding Ukrainian leaders to clean up the corruption that plagued their government and energy industry.
Republicans highlighted that overlap in congressional inquiries during Mr. Biden’s presidency, which did not lead to his impeachment, as some lawmakers had hoped.
Hunter Biden was convicted last year of gun crimes, and pleaded guilty to tax crimes related to millions of dollars in income from Burisma and other foreign businesses.
Less than two months before leaving office, then-President Biden issued a broad pardon for those convictions and any other crimes his son might have committed in the previous 11 years, a period that coincided with the beginning of the Burisma work.
In his letter to Mr. Phillips, Hunter Biden wrote that in addition to his service on the board of Burisma, he had also become an “independent director at Burisma Geothermal,” which he described as a new branch of the company specializing in “geothermal project development, drilling and operation of geothermal power plants.”
He added that Burisma was “experiencing certain difficulties obtaining authorizations that are issued by regional authorities” to develop and operate three geothermal power projects in Tuscany. The projects, Mr. Biden wrote, would invest 175 million euros in the Italian economy and produce environmentally friendly energy. “Most importantly,” Mr. Biden added, “a significant amount of the equipment used in this project will be sourced from U.S. companies.”
The letter requested help arranging a meeting between Burisma officials and Enrico Rossi, the president of the Tuscany regional government at the time, “to introduce geothermal projects led by Burisma Group, to highlight their social and economic benefits for local communities and develop a common action plan that would lead to further development of the Tuscany Region.”
In his response, Mr. Phillips said he knew Mr. Rossi well and maintained “a good working relationship with him.” He added that he had tasked a Commerce Department official at the embassy “to be the point of contact, see where our interests may overlap, and facilitate contact with Mr. Rossi.”
In an interview last summer, Mr. Rossi said that he never met with Mr. Biden and did not recall the United States Embassy contacting him about the projects.
The projects fizzled before drilling began in Tuscany, according to a person involved in the effort.
It is not clear whether the United States Embassy did anything to assist Burisma, though Mr. Phillips concluded his letter by telling Mr. Biden to “keep in touch if there is anything I can do to assist.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/hunter-biden-burisma-letter-italy.html
