Hunter Biden emails shopped around Ukraine last year for $5 million: Time

• The purported Hunter Biden emails shared by The New York Post last week were shopped around in Ukraine for $5 million last year, while Rudy Giuliani met with officials and businessmen there, Time Magazine reported Wednesday.
• Two people told Time that they were approached with the emails, with one saying the asking price was $5 million, and that the person making the offer already had a buyer in mind, President Donald Trump’s allies.
• The Post shared the emails last week, saying they were obtained through Giuliani, who in turn said he obtained them through a laptop that was left at a repair shop in Delaware last year.
• The FBI is investigating whether the leaked emails are part of a foreign intelligence operation, and more than 50 former intelligence officers said they believed Russia could be involved. 
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The purported Hunter Biden emails shared by the New York Post last week were shopped around in Ukraine for $5 million last year, while Rudy Giuliani met with officials and businessmen there, Time Magazine reported Wednesday.

Two people told Time that they were approached with emails allegedly belonging to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, though they declined to say who made the offers, which occurred in May 2019 and September 2019. They also said they did not know if the emails were real, or whether they were the same material that has since been leaked to the Post.

The Post shared the emails last week, saying they were obtained through Giuliani, an attorney for President Donald Trump, who in turn said he obtained them through a laptop that was left at a repair shop in Delaware last year. One of the emails appeared to reference a meeting between Joe Biden and an advisor to Burisma, a firm that once paid his son Hunter. The Biden campaign has denied that the meeting ever took place.

No other news organization has been able to verify the emails. The FBI is investigating whether the leaked emails are part of a foreign intelligence operation, and more than 50 former intelligence officers said they believed Russia could be involved. 

One of the people Time interviewed said they did not know whether the emails obtained by Giuliani were from the same source that approached them. But when the Post first published the story last week, they were reminded that the same information was introduced to them last year, they told Time.

A second person Time interviewed said he was offered the emails in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in mid-September last year. Having declined the offer, he said he was reminded of the incident when the Post published similar material. He also said the person making the offer already had a buyer in mind, and that they wanted to sell it to Trump’s Republican allies, according to Time. 

He said their asking price was $5 million, saying, “I walked away from it, because it smelled awful,” Time reported.

Giuliani traveled to Europe last year, meeting with a number of officials, businessmen and former law enforcement officers from Ukraine. Despite his claims, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden in Ukraine.

Time said the practice of selling or leaking private communications has become increasingly common in Ukraine over the past year, causing the government to pass a law banning it.