Hunter Biden sought assistance from the U.S. embassy in Italy on behalf of Burisma while his father was vice president

After Joe Biden officially withdrew from the race, The New York Times revealed a compromising communication where Hunter Biden asked the U.S. embassy in Italy for help on behalf of Burisma to finalize an energy deal when his father was vice president.

The highly sensitive situation again highlights the possibility that Hunter Biden used his father's political influence to do business abroad, a situation that earned Joe Biden numerous criticisms in the past and has been subject of investigations by Republicans in Congress.

According to the NYT, new records and documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) indicate that Hunter Biden wrote at least one letter to the U.S. ambassador to Italy in 2016 soliciting support for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, of which he was a board member collecting tens of thousands of dollars a month. The president's son earned an estimated $11 million in total between 2013 and 2018 for his role with Burisma.

The records were withheld for years by the Biden administration and were only disclosed once the Democratic president dropped out of the race, a fact that, according to the NYT, may cause suspicion and heightened scrutiny from Republicans who have been tracking Hunter's foreign business dealings for years.

The newspaper reviewed that officials at the U.S. Embassy in the European country were apparently uncomfortable with the request from the then-vice president's son.

"I want to be careful about promising too much," said a Commerce Department official based at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, who handled the response to Hunter.

"This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, U.S.G. should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the D.O.C. Advocacy Center," the official in question stated.

The NYT explained that these acronyms referred to the U.S. government and a Commerce Department program that supports U.S. companies seeking to do business with foreign governments.

Burisma is the same company that was under investigation for corruption by former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was fired by the Ukrainian executive after Joe Biden himself, a key pillar of the Obama administration's foreign policy, threatened Ukraine with freezing millions of dollars in humanitarian aid if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor for alleged corrupt practices.

The situation, considering that Hunter Biden was a former member of Burisma's board of directors, drew criticism against Biden for a potential conflict of interest.

Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden's lawyer, defended his client by explaining to the NYT that the president's son consulted several people, including the U.S. ambassador to Italy at the time, John R. Phillips, whether it was possible to arrange a presentation between Burisma and the president of the Italian region of Tuscany, where Burisma was trying to get a geothermal project.

"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 settled in a statement, adding that Hunter made a "proper" request.

However, the new revelation comes in addition to other evidence linking Hunter to alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) through his work for Burisma, various foreign business entities and controversial overseas partners.

Last week, in a court filing related to his California tax fraud case, special prosecutor David Weiss revealed evidence of potential FARA violations involving Hunter and a Romanian businessman.

The prosecutor's filing noted that Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu, convicted in his home country of bribery in 2016, hired Hunter Biden and his associates "to attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian criminal investigation[of Popoviciu], and thereby cause an end to the investigation."

However, despite the evidence, the U.S. Attorney's Office apparently has no intention of filing charges against Hunter Biden for possible FARA violations.

In his filing, Weiss wrote that the disclosure of the evidence "does not mean that the government will also reference allegations that the defendant violated FARA and that contacts with government officials were improper; such allegations are not relevant to the charges in this tax case."

At the moment, a White House spokesman said Joe Biden did not know that his son had contacted the U.S. Embassy in Italy to help Bursima while he was vice president.