GOP seeks answers from Hunter Biden-linked firm accused of illegal foreign lobbying

House Republicans want to interview a pair of executives at Blue Star Strategies, a firm that once came under investigation for failing to disclose to the U.S. government that it lobbied on behalf of a Ukrainian energy company while Hunter Biden served on the company’s board.

The Republicans asked in letters Wednesday to Blue Star Strategies co-founders Karen Tramontano and Sally Painter that they each schedule closed-door interviews with the House Judiciary Committee to discuss the work they did for Burisma Holdings Limited.

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Tramontano and Painter retroactively registered as foreign agents with the Department of Justice in May 2022, citing their work roughly six years earlier for Burisma on their forms, which are public information.

In their letter, Chairmen Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) observed that the two lobbyists’ registrations came only after the Department of Justice opened an investigation in 2021 into whether they violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act because of their Burisma work. FARA requires lobbyists who represent foreign interests to disclose details about their work to the Justice Department.

Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop show he arranged for Tramontano and Painter to work for Burisma in 2015, writing to a Burisma executive and his business partners at the time that he “trust[ed] Sally and Karen implicitly” to advocate for the company.

The pair would go on to connect Burisma’s owner with U.S. State Department officials, as well as attempt to improve Burisma’s image.

Blue Star Strategies also “leveraged Hunter Biden’s name and association with Burisma” to conduct that work, the GOP chairmen wrote.

Blue Star Strategies’s work also came under the scrutiny of Internal Revenue Service criminal investigators who were, at the time, investigating Hunter Biden for alleged tax crimes in coordination with the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware.

One of the IRS agents, Gary Shapley, alleged to Congress in the spring that a prosecutor in the office, Lesley Wolf, prevented the IRS from subpoenaing Blue Star Strategies’s emails, which Shapley said hindered their investigation into whether Hunter Biden potentially violated FARA.

“She indicated [the subpoena] would likely not get approved. This was a significant blow to the Foreign Agents Registration Act piece of the investigation,” Shapley told Congress.

The chairmen said they needed to speak with Tramontano and Painter as part of their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, who was vice president when Hunter Biden began raking in millions of dollars for his position on the Burisma board. The lawmakers also indicated they could consider FARA-related legislation.

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“We believe that you possess specialized information that will meaningfully advance the impeachment inquiry,” they wrote. “Additionally, we believe that you possess relevant information that would assist the Committees in crafting potential legislation, including legislative reforms to FARA.”

The chairmen asked the Blue Star Strategies executives to contact them by Dec. 8 to arrange interviews.

Blue Star Strategies did not respond to a request for comment.