Hunter Biden is facing legal trouble on multiple fronts, but it's been an unorthodox journey to get here. Attorney General Merrick Garland will answer questions this week about the investigation into President Joe Biden's son, where the spotlight will be ultimately on how much Joe knew about his son's business dealings. In this series, Wayward Son, the Washington Examiner will investigate how we got here.
FARA is a 1930s-era law originally intended to prevent the spread of Nazi and communist party propaganda in the U.S. It requires Americans working as"agents of a foreign principal" to disclose to the government certain lobbying and public relations work on behalf of foreign entities. Witness testimony and emails suggest Hunter Biden leveraged his connections in the U.S. government to help his foreign clients, but he has never made public disclosures to the DOJ about that work.
Similarly, Michael Flynn, a Trump national security adviser, admitted as part of a plea agreement to violating FARA by making false statements about work he did on behalf of Turkey. Trump pardoned Flynn before he could be sentenced, however, and the case was dismissed. Kate Bedingfield, who at the time was Joe Biden’s communications director, asked reporters from two different outlets who were writing stories about Burisma to have off-the-record conversations with Hochstein, who she said could provide “some unique and valuable perspective on these relationships,” according to emails.Optics may have been one reason Hunter Biden never registered with the government.
He asked Burisma in 2014 to hire a Democratic lobbying firm, Blue Star Strategies, to handle some of the outreach to the Obama administration officials that he did not personally undertake. No explanation has ever been provided as to why Blue Star Strategies was permitted to file a FARA disclosure years later without facing consequences for failing to register.