President Joe Biden has, for a second time, selected a nominee with ties to his son Hunter Biden for a top post at the Justice Department, picking a former longtime partner at the law firm where his son worked for years and that was involved in helping the younger Biden in his business dealings with Burisma.
Biden announced on Friday that he had nominated Hampton Dellinger, a Yale Law School graduate and former deputy attorney general in North Carolina, to be assistant attorney general for DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy. Dellinger’s LinkedIn indicates he founded Hampton Dellinger PLLC in November after working as a partner at Boies, Schiller, and Flexner from May 2013 through last year. Hunter Biden was a counsel at the same firm, starting there in 2010 and reportedly leaving in 2017. In 2014, the president’s son landed the Ukrainian energy giant as a client for the firm and took a lucrative position on its board.
Biden discussed the firm’s involvement in the Burisma saga in his memoir, Beautiful Things.
“I brought Burisma to Boies Schiller Flexner. … They wanted to see whether Burisma was legit or plagued with corruption before taking them on,” he wrote.
HUNTER BIDEN HOLDS STAKE IN CHINESE FIRM THAT INVESTED IN COMPANIES SANCTIONED BY U.S.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s hard drive, reported by the Washington Free Beacon, show Dellinger “worked on the Crisis Management and Government Response team” at Boies Schiller. The outlet said “emails from Biden’s laptop show Boies Schiller Flexner partner William Isaacson arranged a dinner at his home for members of the Crisis Management and Government Response team in March 2014. Isaacson wrote in one email that Biden, Dellinger, and several others had confirmed their attendance at the party. … The next day, Heather King, a partner at the firm, asked Biden whether he would be available to meet with the Crisis Management and Government Response team. Biden introduced Burisma Holdings as a possible client for Boies Schiller Flexner the following month.”
Dellinger’s involvement in any specific Burisma-related work is unclear, though archived links to Boies Schiller’s Crisis Management and Government Response webpage show him listed along with a dozen firm lawyers in June 2014 and beyond.
Hunter Biden has reportedly been under investigation since 2018 as federal authorities scrutinize his taxes and possibly his foreign business dealings. DOJ’s website says the mission of the Office of Legal Policy is to “serve as the primary policy advisor to the Attorney General.”
Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden, was convicted in 2018 for securities fraud and conspiracy charges. Biden sent an email to Archer in April 2014 just over a week before then-Vice President Joe Biden gave a press conference with Ukraine’s prime minister, with Hunter Biden writing, “The announcement of my guys [sic] upcoming travels should be characterized as part of our advice and thinking — but what he will say and do is out of our hands.” In the laptop emails obtained by the New York Post, Hunter Biden also wrote to Archer about his financial expectations, saying, “If we are not protected financially regardless of the outcome we could find ourselves frozen out of a lot of current and future opportunities. The contract should begin now — not after the upcoming visit of my guy. That should include a retainer in the range of 25k p/m [$25,000 per month] w/ additional fees where appropriate for more in depth work to go to BSF [Boies Schiller Flexner] for our protection. Complete separate from our respective deals re board participation.”
In 2019, The New York Times reported that “unreported financial data from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office show the company paid $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014.”
Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi messaged Hunter Biden and Archer in May 2014, according to laptop emails obtained by Fox News in October, worrying about “one or more pretrial proceedings were initiated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs with regard to Burisma Holdings.” Pozharskyi told Biden that “we urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions.”
Archer forwarded this to King, asking to “discuss.” King said, “As part of our ongoing strategy, I would ideally like for BSF to engage a lobbyist of our choosing to work with me.” She said that Boies Schiller would “lead all this work and can execute the political and legal work right up to the line where we would need to register as lobbyists, but I don’t want to register under the lobbying disclosure act or the foreign agents registration act.”
Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley released a joint report in September 2020 that stated, “The earliest payment from Burisma related to Hunter Biden appears to have been made to Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP. … On May 7, 2014, … Burisma sent Boies Schiller a payment of $250,000. Approximately one week later, on May 12, 2014, Hunter Biden joined Archer on Burisma’s board of directors. Burisma made a second payment to Boies Schiller on Sept. 16, 2014, in the amount of $33,039.77.” The Republican senators said, “It is unclear whether any of the funds sent from Burisma to Boies Schiller were used to pay for services that Hunter Biden was supposed to provide to Burisma as a member of the board.”
The report said that Mykola Zlochevsky, a Ukrainian oligarch and former natural resources minister from 2010 to 2012 under pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, “made at least two large cash transfers to Burisma during the time that Archer and Biden served on its board of directors” and added that “these transactions, including those to Biden and his companies, were identified for potential financial criminal activity.”
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The Republican report also contained a mention of Boies Schiller in relation to Hunter Biden’s Chinese business entanglements. The report said that Burisma began sending regular payments to Hunter Biden via his private Owasco law firm, and that Biden and a Chinese national named Gongwen Dong, who was working for Chinese tycoon Ye Jianming, opened a line of credit under the business name Hudson West III, which sent a $1 million payment to Owasco in March 2018 with a memo line for “Dr. Patrick Ho Chi Ping Representation.” According to a “confidential document” with the Senate, Hunter Biden stated that “Owasco LLC and co-Counsel Boies Schiller Flexner will represent Dr. Patrick Ho Chi Ping [at] trial.”
