HOUSTON, US

Hunter Biden sought assistance from the US State Department for a foreign company while his father was vice president, which was revealed late Tuesday, according to newly released records from the Biden administration.

The disclosure of information to The New York Times comes just three weeks after President Joe Biden dropped his 2024 reelection bid.

The records, which have been withheld for years, indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the US ambassador to Italy in 2016 seeking help for a lucrative energy project in that country with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, where the younger Biden was a board member.

The embassy's response appeared to be cautious at best, with officials giving no commitment to Biden in their response.

"I want to be careful about promising too much," wrote a Commerce Department official at the time. "This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, (the United States government) should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the (US Department of Commerce) Advocacy Center."

Hunter Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, said his client "asked various people" whether they could arrange an introduction between Burisma and the president of the Tuscany region and that the outreach to then-US ambassador to Italy John R. Phillips was a "proper request."

"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.

The White House said President Biden was not aware that his son was reaching out to the US Embassy in Italy on behalf of Burisma while he was serving as Barack Obama's vice president.

The release of the State Department documents comes on the heels of Hunter Biden being charged with tax evasion of millions of dollars in income earned from Burisma and other foreign companies. He is set to stand trial for those charges next month.