America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for failing to require Hunter Biden to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) during the Obama Administration.
The lawsuit says that the now-President Joe Biden’s son was working for Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and representing them in business dealings with the White House when his father was vice president.
“In March, AFL obtained emails from litigation against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirming that Hunter directly represented Burisma in its dealings with the Obama White House,” AFL said in a press release. “Hunter was both a board member of Burisma, a ‘foreign principal’ under 22 U.S.C. § 611(b), and an attorney at the law firm representing it. Hunter Biden was arguably Burisma’s agent and subject to FARA registration because he was an officer of Burisma and appears to have represented Burisma’s interests to the Office of the Vice President.”
The organization noted that an “agent of a foreign principal” under FARA includes “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.”
In March, the legal organization filed a formal complaint with the DOJ over Hunter Biden failing to register as a foreign agent.
The organization noted that “On July 30, 2017, the House Ways and Means Committee obtained damning WhatsApp messages where Hunter Biden wrote to CEFC officials that he was ‘sitting here with my father’ and threatened them with his ‘ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction’ because their ‘commitment made has not been fulfilled.'”
“As detailed in our complaint, the record is quite clear. Hunter Biden appears to have used his unique access and position to the benefit of multiple foreign principals. Any other American would have been criminally prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent for this conduct–but not under Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice, which continues to go out of its way to help President Biden, his family, and his radical liberal allies. The Attorney General has a non-discretionary duty to ensure that Hunter Biden registers as a foreign agent under FARA and provides the American people with transparency into his activities on behalf of foreign principals,“ said Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Vice President and General Counsel.
Read the full lawsuit here.
