Hunter Biden asked State Department for help getting Burisma gig, NYT says

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Hunter Biden asked the U.S. State Department for help in securing a deal for Burisma in Italy in 2016 while his father was vice president.

The Times had documents and interviews that showed Hunter Biden wrote a letter to the Italian ambassador while he was in Italy trying to get regulatory approval for a geothermal project in Tuscany. He was a board member of Burisma at the time.

According to the documents, Italian officials at the time seemed uncomfortable with Hunter Biden's overtures.

“I want to be careful about promising too much,” one Commerce department official wrote.

“This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, [the United States government] should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the [Department of Commerce] Advocacy Center,” the official continued.

The deal never got off the ground, and Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell, said it was a "proper" request for an introduction to the president of Tuscany, and nothing more.