A lawyer who, years ago, represented the embattled chairman of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, appeared to register retroactively as a foreign agent for Burisma on Thursday.
John Buretta disclosed the work he did for Mykola Zlochevsky, the former head of Burisma, in 2016 in documents filed with the Justice Department this week under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires Americans representing certain foreign interests in the U.S. to disclose their work to the DOJ.
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Coming more than seven years after the fact, the late filing raises questions about why Hunter Biden, who also performed work for Burisma and Zlochevsky at that time, has not registered under FARA.
Buretta worked as a defense lawyer for Zlochevsky as he faced a corruption investigation from the Ukrainian government and, according to the FARA documents, from U.S. authorities.
“In January 2016, Mr. Buretta was retained to represent Mykola Zlochevsky in connection with possible investigations by governmental authorities in the United States,” Buretta’s law firm noted in forms filed Thursday with the DOJ. “The representation thereafter broadened to include Burisma Holdings Limited, as well as governmental investigations in Ukraine, and continued until April 2017.”
Buretta met with three Obama administration officials in March 2016 and wrote a letter to another in September 2016, according to the document.
March 2016 is the same month that Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was fired at the behest of then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was the recipient of the letter from Buretta several months later.
A spokesperson for Buretta’s law firm, Cravath, Swaine, & Moore, said the decision to file a disclosure this week came after a discussion with the DOJ.
“After discussions with the Department of Justice regarding FARA’s scope, Cravath has filed a retroactive registration covering legal services provided to two former clients in March and September 2016, and a supplemental statement terminating the registration as of September 2016,” a spokesperson for Buretta’s firm told the Washington Examiner.
The DOJ stepped up enforcement of FARA violations during the Trump administration, prosecuting Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for failing to register as a foreign agent for work Manafort had performed in Ukraine.
Manafort and others were not permitted to file retroactive disclosures in order to avoid criminal charges.
Another firm that worked closely with Burisma during the corruption investigation, Blue Star Strategies, was permitted to submit retroactive FARA filings years after working with Burisma after the DOJ investigated it for breaking the foreign lobbying law. Hunter Biden had a close relationship with the lobbying firm and brought it on to work with Burisma in 2015, but Blue Star Strategies did not disclose that work until 2022.
Hunter Biden was also under investigation for FARA violations, two IRS whistleblowers told Congress last year, but prosecutors have not charged him with a foreign lobbying crime.
Hunter Biden had initially represented his work for the Ukrainian company as legal in nature; he was described as a “top lawyer” for Burisma in 2014.
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But emails from his abandoned laptop and witness testimony have since revealed that Hunter Biden’s presence on the Burisma board of directors had far more to do with his powerful last name and relationships in Washington, D.C., than with his services as a lawyer.
The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.
