Ukraine labs in Hunter Biden's computer trail

The much-scrutinized laptop computer of Hunter Biden contains emails that connect the US president's son to biological laboratories in Ukraine, according to allegations by the Russian government and media reports.

On March 24, the Kremlin alleged that the labs produced biochemical weapons.

"An investment fund run by …Hunter Biden funded research and the implementation of the United States' military biological program. It is obvious that Joe Biden, as his father and the head of state, was aware of that activity," Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said, according to Russian media. Volodin called for a US congressional investigation and an explanation from the White House.

"Incoming material allowed us to trace the interaction scheme between US government agencies and the Ukrainian bio-lab," Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, said at a briefing on March 24.

US intelligence officials had earlier dismissed Russia's claims as propaganda, explaining that Ukraine's network of biological labs researching pathogens was not secret and had publicly received funding from Washington.

Russia's new claim, however, that Hunter Biden's investment fund was involved in raising money for bio-lab projects in Ukraine is accurate, according to emails first obtained by the New York Post and initially reported by the Daily Mail of London on March 25.

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners invested $500,000 in Metabiota, a pathogen-research company headquartered in San Francisco, and raised millions more through firms that included Goldman Sachs, according to emails found on the computer, which was abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop in April 2019.

Rosemont Seneca is an investment firm based in Washington, DC.It was founded in 2009 by Hunter Biden and business associates Christopher Heinz and Devon Archer.

The Post reported on the laptop after it received data from the computer from Rudy Giuliani, the Republican former mayor of New York and a legal adviser to then president Donald Trump, in October 2020.

The Post's story was suppressed on social media and resulted in the newspaper's suspension by Twitter, which cited its "hacked materials "policy for not allowing the story to be distributed on its platform.

The New York Times, in a report on March 17 that centered on a federal tax investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings, reported that emails from the laptop were "authenticated".

"Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr Biden in a Delaware repair shop," the newspaper said.

"The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation."

'Science project'

Hunter Biden introduced Metabiota to officials at Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where he was a highly paid board member, for a "science project" involving bio-labs in Ukraine, according to the emails.

Metabiota says on its website that it "has over a decade of experience partnering with industry and governments worldwide to build resilience to epidemics".

Metabiota has worked in Ukraine for Black& Veatch, a US defense contractor with ties to military intelligence agencies, which built secure labs in Ukraine, according to the Daily Mail.

Metabiota's then vice-president Mary Guttieri wrote to Hunter Biden about geopolitical issues involving the company's research in the former Soviet republic in April 2014, two months after Russia annexed the Crimea region, according to the emails.

"As promised, I've prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine's cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society," her memo read.

Sam Faddis, a former senior CIA officer who reviewed the laptop's emails, told the Daily Mail that the offer to help drive Ukraine's independence was unusual. "It raises the question. What is the real purpose of this venture?" he said.

The US awarded $23.9 million to Metabiota later in 2014, with $307,091 allocated for "Ukrainian research projects", government spending records showed.

The younger Biden, 52, boasted to investors that his company organized funding for Metabiota and helped it "get new customers "including "government agencies", according to the emails.