The legal advocacy group, America First Legal (AFL), has filed a lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), claiming the department failed to enforce the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) with regard to Hunter Biden during his father’s vice presidency.
The AFL alleges that AG Garland “failed to require proper registration or otherwise follow legal procedures concerning a FARA waiver for Hunter,” which has brought the issue into sharp focus.
The lawsuit stems from a discovery that Hunter Biden “directly represented Burisma in its dealings with the Obama White House” during his tenure as a board member of the company, which is considered a “foreign principal” under 22 U.S.C. § 611(b).
According to AFL, Hunter Biden was “arguably Burisma’s agent and subject to FARA registration” due to his status as an officer of the company and his role in representing the company’s interests to the Office of the Vice President.
AFL, in its official statement, described a “foreign principal” as “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.”
Following this discovery, AFL filed a formal complaint with the DOJ against Hunter Biden for failing to register under FARA.
The organization highlights that Federal law “makes clear that no person shall act as an agent of a foreign principal unless he has filed with the Attorney General a true and complete registration statement and files applicable supplements—none of which occurred during the Obama administration.”
Hunter Biden’s questionable activities were further underscored by an email, recently released by the National Archives, showing his involvement in a phone call between then-Vice President Biden and then-Ukrainian President Poroshenko.
The AFL’s case is seemingly strengthened by a recent indictment against Gal Luft by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for “willfully failing to register under the FARA by engaging in political activities in the United States on behalf of CEFC and Ye Jianming, a Chinese national.”
The group underlines the fact that Hunter Biden’s “lucrative business arrangements with CEFC and Ye Jianming have been well known for years.”
AFL cited two investigative reports released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance in 2020 detailing the Biden family’s complex financial ties to CEFC and Ye Jianming.
Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Vice President and General Counsel, expressed his concerns in a statement, saying, “Any other American would have been criminally prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent for this conduct–but not under Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice, which continues to go out of its way to help President Biden, his family, and his radical liberal allies.”
The AFL has pledged to continue its pursuit of justice, promising to “hold Hunter Biden and the DOJ accountable for circumventing the law and conducting foreign affairs illegally while Joe Biden was Vice President.”
Read the full lawsuit here:
