#Biden campaign says Burisma meeting not on ‘official schedule’

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign said Wednesday in a carefully worded statement there were no meetings on his “official schedules” in 2015 with Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi.

The response to The Post’s expose Wednesday about a meeting described in an alleged email on his son Hunter Biden’s laptop does not mention personal calendars or dispute that the get-together actually happened.

Biden has not directly responded to the reporting, which appears to debunk his prior claim that he had “never spoken” with his son about his “overseas business dealing.”

Biden led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy while Hunter Biden earned a reported $83,000 per month on Burisma’s board, despite no prior industry experience.

Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly emailed Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board, to thank him for facilitating a meeting.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the alleged email reads.

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to Politico that the meeting was not on Biden’s “official schedules” and did not take place “as alleged.” The statement does not foreclose a meeting taking place in an unofficial manner.

“[W]e have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” Bates said.

The Biden campaign did not respond to five requests for comment from The Post before publication of the initial account. The candidate himself declared an early-morning lid Wednesday, meaning he will have no public events.

“Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath,” Bates said to Politico.

“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani — whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported — claimed to have such materials.”

However, in addition to repeated requests for comment sent to the Biden campaign, including to Bates himself, before publication, The Post informed a lawyer for Hunter Biden, George R. Mesires, of Giuliani’s role in passing the hard drive’s contents to The Post.

The Post specified in the email that “Rudy Giuliani gave The Post an external hard drive that the owner of a computer-repair shop in Delaware told The Post was copied from a laptop that Hunter Biden brought in for repair but never picked up.”

House Democrats impeached President Trump in December for asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden’s employment. Senate Republicans acquitted Trump in February of charges he abused his power and obstructed a congressional investigation.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is working with the Delaware computer repairman, whose identity was confirmed by The Post, to verify the documents on the hard drive.