Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max The New York Times is still digging into HUNTER BIDEN ’s business relationships. In a new lawsuit on Monday, the newspaper sued the State Department to obtain emails from Romanian embassy officials sent between 2015 and 2019 mentioning a number of international business people, including the president’s son and his former business associate TONY BOBULINSKI, who briefly became a political celebrity at the end of the 2020 election because of his Biden connections. The FOIA requests also seek information on former New York City Mayor RUDY GIULIANI, who was dispatched by DONALD TRUMP to find dirt on Hunter Biden’s business relationships in Ukraine. In its filing in federal court in Manhattan, the Times accuses the department of dragging its feet on fulfilling multiple FOIA requests sent last year, beginning in June. After the Times asked the State Department in December 2021 what their estimated date was for fulfilling the FOIA requests, State told them April 15, 2023. One of the Times’ goals in the suit appears to be finding out whether embassy officials did any favors on behalf of private businesses (including, presumably, that of the president’s son) that would raise questions about possible conflicts of interest and corruption. Specifically, the request seeks records about “(1) the possible improper use of federal government resources to assist and advance private business interests with connections to United States government officials and (2) the possible evasion of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by those private business interests, and (3) the non-enforcement of FARA by the federal government in relation to those private business interests.” The FOIA requests are a sign that the paper is still investigating the web of international business relationships cultivated by the president’s son. Senate Republicans in 2020 searched for evidence that then-vice president Biden manipulated Ukraine policies to benefit his son but failed to prove any wrongdoing by Biden himself. "As a routine part of their reporting, New York Times journalists regularly seek potentially newsworthy information from a variety of sources, including from the U.S. government through FOIA requests,” said a spokesperson for the paper. “We're hopeful the government will promptly release any relevant documents, and as always we are prepared to pursue our request through a lawsuit if necessary. Just as we do on any line of reporting, we will assess the newsworthiness of the material once we receive it." The reporting also threatens to revive an old feud, which at times turned personal, between the Biden campaign team and KEN VOGEL, the Times’ money and influence reporter who has spearheaded the coverage of the president’s son for the paper. In a series of stories for the Times and POLITICO over several years, Vogel reported on both Hunter Biden’s business activities and the Trump campaign’s fixation on that work, including the aggressive steps it took to uncover information on it. Vogel described the stories as both a “ significant liability ” for Biden, as well as a “prescient” revelation about Trump’s grudge against officials in Ukraine, setting the stage for the president's 2020 impeachment. Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, the Biden team regularly expressed fury at the Times over Vogel’s coverage of Hunter Biden. Then-deputy campaign manager KATE BEDINGFIELD sent a letter to New York Times executive editor DEAN BAQUET complaining about Vogel’s coverage, dubbing it an “egregious act of journalistic malpractice.” The campaign noted that CNN's media reporting team referred to the stories as "widely panned," and media critics at Columbia Journalism Review said the Times seemed "aloof to the possibility of being used as an unwitting accomplice in a disinformation campaign." Then-rapid response director ANDREW BATES also regularly battled with Vogel on Twitter. Bates suggested Vogel was being fed the Hunter Biden stories by Giuliani, and even mocked the way Vogel capitalized certain words in tweets, and the local upscale market his family owned. “SCOOP from Philadelphia: KEN VOGEL (@kenvogel ) is a COWARD,” Bates tweeted in February of 2020. Vogel returned the favor, mocking Bates in December 2021 over a report that the now-White House communications official anonymously texted Giuliani during the 2020 campaign to troll him — “professional AND courageous,” Vogel tweeted. The bad blood between the country’s biggest newspaper and the 46th president’s team has persisted throughout his first year in office. The Biden White House has kept the Times at arm's length. Biden has only granted one interview to the paper thus far, agreeing to speak with DAVID BROOKS, the conservative-turned-moderate columnist whom the president regularly reads and name dropped during the 2020 presidential campaign. 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