Law firm registers as foreign agent 8 years after working with Burisma — the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden

New York-based law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore registered as a foreign agent last week, eight years after the legal practice worked on behalf of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. 

Meanwhile, first son Hunter Biden has never registered as foreign agent despite raking in $80,000-a-month as a Burisma board member from from 2014 to 2019 – a period which overlapped with the final three years that his father, Joe Biden, served as Barack Obama’s vice president and oversaw the administration’s policy toward Ukraine. 

The disclosure, filed Thursday, stems from meetings Cravath, Swaine & Moore partner Thomas Buretta held with Obama administration officials in 2016, after he was retained to represent Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, as his company faced “possible investigations by governmental authorities in the United States.” 

Cravath, Swaine & Moore retroactively complied with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, “after discussions with the Department of Justice regarding FARA’s scope,” the firm said in a statement, according to Reuters. 

FARA requires American law firms and lobbyists to disclose certain work done on behalf of foreign clients.

“Cravath has filed a retroactive registration covering legal services provided to two former clients in March and September 2016,” the firm added, referring to Zlochevsky and Burisma Holdings. 

The law firm billed the Ukrainian oligarch and his company nearly $350,000 for services rendered in 2016, the FARA filing shows.  

“As part of this representation, Mr. Buretta met with three US government officials in March 2016 and sent one letter to a U.S. government official in September 2016,” the filing states. “In these interactions, Mr. Buretta identified his clients and presented facts relevant to potential US and Ukrainian investigations, including information from a UK proceeding involving his clients.”

Buretta, who previously served as principal deputy assistant attorney general and chief of staff for the DOJ’s Criminal Division in the Obama administration, met individually with then-Under Secretary of State Catherine Novelli, Assistant Secretary of State Amos Hochstein, and Justice Department official Bruce Swartz, according to the filing. He also sent a letter to then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. 

The law firm partner’s meetings with Obama administration officials took place just weeks before Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was ousted from his post.

An FBI whistleblower has alleged that Joe Biden, as vice president, pushed for Shokin’s firing because the prosecutor was investigating Burisma. The whistleblower said that Zlochevsky claimed he had “bribed” the Bidens for $5 million each — partly to get Shokin canned.

Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018 that during a December 2015 trip to Kyiv he threatened to withhold $1 billion in US aid to the former Soviet state if Shokin wasn’t fired.

“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money … Well, son of a bitch. He got fired,” Biden recalled. 

Critics of Special Counsel David Weiss’ long-running investigation into the president’s son also noted in the aftermath of the Delaware US Attorney’s December indictment against Hunter Biden for tax crimes that the 53-year-old still hasn’t faced charges for alleged FARA violation — which could implicate his father.

“Unless US Attorney Weiss investigates everyone involved in the Bidens’ fraud schemes and influence peddling, it will be clear President Biden’s DOJ is protecting Hunter Biden and the big guy,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement last month. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a member of the Oversight Committee, tweeted, “DOJ left off FARA charges. The income came from foreign countries and we have proof.”

“The omission of the FARA charges remains the glaring contradiction with other cases, including against various Trump associates,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told The Post in December.

“There is no evidence that Weiss ever seriously pursued those allegations. The result was to further insulate the White House in the scandal. A FARA charge would have added pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel on the corruption scandal itself. Indeed, the indictment is itself a marvel of evasion — charging the evasion of tax without addressing the corruption producing the money itself,” said Turley.

Hunter Biden’s alleged FARA violations include convening DC dinners in 2014 and 2015 attended by his father and his associates from Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, and bringing Mexican associates to the vice president’s residence and setting up meetings for them with Obama-Biden administration officials.