US authorities are investigating whether recently published emails that purport to detail the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in Ukraine and China are connected to an ongoing Russian disinformation effort targeting the former vice president’s campaign, a US official and a congressional source briefed on the matter said. The conservative-leaning New York Post claimed in a series of articles this week that it obtained “smoking-gun” emails about Hunter Biden and his dealings in Ukraine. CNN has not determined the authenticity of the emails. President Donald Trump and his allies have used this topic to smear the Bidens over the past year and seized on the recent articles to attack Biden in the final weeks of the presidential election. The specific new allegations touch on the same topics as the Kremlin’s ongoing disinformation campaign against the Bidens, which the US intelligence community said this summer was intended to weaken Biden’s candidacy against Trump. The FBI is leading the investigation, the official and congressional source said. NBC was first to report the inquiry. The probe is part of a larger investigation into Russian disinformation that dates back to before the impeachment inquiry last fall. The alleged disinformation campaign is aimed at tying the former vice president to his son’s dealings with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, according to US officials familiar with the matter. The New York Post says it obtained the emails through two Trump confidants: His personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Giuliani has openly coordinated with a known Russian agent to promote disinformation about the Bidens. The Washington Post reported Thursday the White House, and Trump personally, were warned in 2019 that Giuliani “was being used to feed Russian misinformation” to the President. Separately, Bannon was recently charged by the Justice Department with orchestrating a million-dollar fraud scheme and accused of deceiving thousands of donors to his nonprofit. In a Fox News interview Friday, Giuliani said Trump never mentioned the warning to him and that he hasn’t been told by US intelligence officials that he is peddling Russian disinformation.
US investigating if emails connected to Russia disinformation against Biden
