Joe Biden met son Hunter's Ukrainian energy contacts less than a year before he pressured officials to fire the prosecutor investigating his company, secret emails reveal

 Hunter Biden introduced his father Joe to an adviser at his Ukrainian gas firm before the then-vice president lobbied for the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating the company, a trove of emails has revealed. 

Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for 'an opportunity to meet your father' in an email sent in 2015, according to the stash of data obtained by the New York Post. 

The files also show Hunter repeatedly referring to his father as 'my guy' while writing to a colleague at Burisma and discussing a possible $25,000 retainer. 

The collection of messages and images were recovered on a MacBook Pro laptop that was brought into a Delaware computer shop and never picked up. 

They shed new light on the younger Biden's business dealings in Ukraine, which were at the center of the Trump impeachment probe and which the president has repeatedly tried to use against the Democratic nominee.  

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Hunter Biden and his father Joe Biden in 2016. Hunter's business dealings in Ukraine were at the center of the Trump impeachment case 

The trove of emails was given to the Post via Trump associate Rudy Giuliani, after the computer store owner gave one copy to the FBI and kept hold of another. 

Giuliani has previously spearheaded claims that Biden tried to fire Ukraine's chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin in order to stop him investigating Burisma. 

In one phone call, then-Vice President Biden told Ukraine's president that he would commit $1billion to the country once Shokin was fired.

Biden described this in a speech in 2018, saying: 'I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. 

'Well, son of a b****. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.' 

However, Biden was representing the official position of the Obama administration and other Western countries, who regarded Shokin as soft on corruption.  

Biden has accused Giuliani of peddling 'false, debunked conspiracy theories'.  

The April 2015 email from Pozharskyi came a year after the Burisma adviser had written to Hunter asking for 'advice on how you could use your influence'.  

Biden has said he never speaks to his son about his overseas business dealings. 

One email sent to his business partner Devon Archer around the time Hunter joined the company's corporate board repeatedly refers to his father as 'my guy'. 

It is reportedly dated just over a week before his father, Joe Biden, held a press conference in Ukraine with the country's Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, on April 22, 2014.

'The announcement of my guys [sic] upcoming travels should be characterized as part of our advice and thinking- but what he will say and do is out of our hands,' Hunter Biden wrote on April 13, 2014.

'In other words it could be a really good thing or it could end up creating too great an expectation. We need to temper expectations regarding that visit.'