When the New York Post published an exclusive story on Oct. 14 about a hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, a political frenzy followed.
Conservatives and supporters of President Donald Trump say the hard drive’s materials prove Hunter and Joe Biden have used the former vice president’s position for personal gain. Biden supporters say the materials are part of an 11th-hour disinformation campaign.
WORLD, like other news outlets covering the claims about the Bidens, can’t independently verify the information contained in the Post’s report. But the claims are in line with an apparent pattern: Hunter Biden seemed to profit from his connection to his father in his dealings with foreign business partners. What the Post’s reports do not provide is conclusive evidence that Joe Biden was directly entangled with his son’s business ventures, either in Ukraine or in China. But most mainstream news outlets have been slow to cover the story, and social media giants actively squelched it on their platforms.
The Post’s first article centers on an April 2015 email to Hunter Biden from Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board from 2014 to 2019.
In a picture of the typo-laden email, Pozharskyi writes, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together. It’s realty an honor and pleasure.”
The Post does not show that the email received any response. It is unclear whether a meeting with the former vice president took place.
The Biden campaign said in a statement Joe Biden’s official schedule didn’t show any such meeting. The campaign acknowledged to Politico it was possible Biden had an “informal interaction” with Pozharskyi. Burisma’s website lists meetings between Pozharskyi and some U.S. officials, including a 2017 meeting with then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. It does not include any mention of a meeting with Joe Biden.
The Biden campaign has not claimed the email or material from the hard drive are fake.
Hunter Biden’s attorney, George Mesires, told The Washington Post: “We have no idea where this came from, and certainly cannot credit anything that Rudy Giuliani provided to the NY Post, but what I do know for certain is that this purported meeting never happened.”
The New York Post obtained the emails through Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney. The email came from a hard drive found on one of three water-damaged laptops dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware last April. The shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, could not say for certain that the person who brought it in was Hunter Biden, but he said the laptop had a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation (named after Joe Biden’s late eldest son, a former Delaware attorney general).
Mac Isaac said some of the material on the laptop concerned him. (The Post report described sexual content unrelated to the business email.) Mac Isaac told reporters he tried to contact the person who dropped off the laptop but never heard back. He made a copy of the hard drive, then turned the material over to the FBI. The Post’s report included a picture of a subpoena acknowledging that the FBI took an Apple laptop and an external hard drive. Mac Isaac’s copy eventually made its way to Giuliani. Mac Isaac has acknowledged he is a Trump supporter.
Because Giuliani initially refused to let news organizations access the hard drive, the material’s authenticity remained in doubt.
On Oct. 29, the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) reported that Giuliani provided the outlet with a copy of the laptop after initially resisting. Robert Graham, founder of cybersecurity firm Errata Security, reviewed the metadata of the email on behalf of the DCNF and concluded the email is authentic and that the contents are “provably legitimate.”
Several mainstream outlets, including Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, passed on breaking the story when Giuliani first approached them. The Wall Street Journal was still working to verify the allegations when Giuliani gave the materials to the Post.
Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine have long raised eyebrows. He reportedly received up to $50,000 per month to serve on Burisma’s board, even though he had no experience in the energy industry. His involvement on Burisma’s board overlapped with his father’s tenure as vice president. As vice president, Joe Biden took the lead on Ukrainian foreign policy and focused on anti-corruption efforts. He participated in a pressure campaign to oust a prosecutor many Western powers said stymied anti-corruption measures. The Obama White House denied any conflict of interest since Hunter Biden’s work was in his private capacity. But by the time Joe Biden began to campaign for president, the former vice president acknowledged “the appearance looked bad.”
Critics of Joe Biden have said Hunter Biden benefitted from the firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin, whose office had investigated Burisma for corruption. But as WORLD previously reported earlier this year, that investigation was dormant and all but closed during Shokin’s tenure. In an October 2019 interview with ABC News, Hunter Biden admitted accepting a seat on Burisma’s board was “a mistake, in retrospect.”
Questions around Trump’s own dealings with Ukraine were at the center of his impeachment earlier this year.
An investigation by Senate Republicans on the Homeland Security and Finance committees found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. The committees’ 87-page report, released Sept. 23, concluded that Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine “was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.” Some Obama administration officials said the Burisma connection made it “awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine.” But the committees found no evidence the Burisma connection influenced specific U.S. policy.
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