State Department Agrees to Supply Hunter Biden Emails to NY Times

A lawyer for the New York Times said Friday said the newspaper reached an agreement with the State Department to supply correspondence mentioning Hunter Biden and others tied to his business dealings.

A Friday court filing announced the development, part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the records. David McCraw, who is representing the New York Times, informed the judge that the State Department said it started identifying records as part of the request and agreed to hand over the first batch of records April 28.

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McCraw, who said his letter to U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken was being submitted on behalf of both parties, requested to move a court date scheduled for March 17, as it “may not be necessary” given the agreement on a schedule to process the sought-after records.

“The parties are still negotiating the number of pages to be processed in and the frequency of each production. The parties respectfully propose to provide a status report to the Court on March 25, 2022, informing the Court of the results of this negotiation,” the letter reads.

The New York Times filed its lawsuit in January, accusing the State Department of failing to respond in a timely manner to two FOIA requests by reporter Kenneth Vogel to provide emails sent or received by five officials at the U.S. Embassy in Romania between August 2015 and December 2019. The agency had told the newspaper that the estimated date for responding was April 2023 at the earliest.

The records sought were those that were related to “the possible improper use of federal government resources” by private citizens and the possible evasion and nonenforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Several keywords included “Hunter Biden” or “Robert H. Biden,” “Rudy Giuliani,” Trump’s former personal lawyer and New York City mayor, and “Mark Gitenstein,” U.S. ambassador to the European Union, among others.

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Two people associated with Biden, including Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate, and Devin Archer, a friend of Biden’s who was sentenced to a year in prison as part of a fraud scheme in 2020, were also named in the request.

Biden is facing a federal investigation into his foreign business dealings and has denied any wrongdoing. Giuliani, who was instrumental in the 2020 election in digging up dirt on the Bidens, and his work in Romania are also a subject of interest for federal investigators.

The State Department rejected in a filing this month assertions that it illegally slow-walked the fulfillment of the FOIA requests, according to Insider. The State Department did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on McCraw’s letter.