A lawyer who previously represented the head of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that once employed Hunter Biden, registered retroactively as a foreign agent for the work he did for the natural gas company seven years ago.

The registration from John Buretta came in documents filed Thursday with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires lawfirms and lobbyists to disclose their work representing the interests of foreign clients.

The disclosure from Buretta for the 2016 work he did for Mykola Zlochevsky — who co-founded Burisma Holdings in 2002 — came more than seven years after the fact, raising questions and concerns about why Hunter Biden, who also performed work on behalf of Burisma and Zlochevsky at the time, did not register as a foreign agent under FARA.

Buretta previously worked as a defense lawyer for Zlochevsky amid corruption investigations into the Burisma chief by the Ukrainian government and, according to FARA documents, U.S. authorities.

In the forms filed this week, Buretta’s law firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, noted, ‘In January 2016, Mr. Buretta was retained to represent Mykola Zlochevsky in connection with possible investigations by governmental authorities in the United States. The representation thereafter broadened to include Burisma Holdings Limited, as well as governmental investigations in Ukraine, and continued until April 2017. The representation included both registrable and non-registrable activities. This registration and related materials cover all interactions with U.S. government officials in the course of the representation.’

As part of his representation of Zlochevsky, the law firm noted in the form that Buretta met with three Obama administration officials in March 2016 and sent another U.S. government official a letter in September 2016.

‘In these interactions, Mr. Buretta identified his clients and presented facts relevant to potential U.S. and Ukrainian investigations, including information from a UK proceeding involving his clients,’ the law firm noted.

Buretta’s law firm did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, but in a statement to the Washington Examiner explained that the filing came after a discussion with the DOJ.

‘After discussions with the Department of Justice regarding FARA’s scope, Cravath has filed a retroactive registration covering legal services provided to two former clients in March and September 2016, and a supplemental statement terminating the registration as of September 2016,’ a Cravath, Swaine & Moore spokesperson told the outlet.

In recent years, the DOJ has strengthened its enforcement of FARA violations. During former President Donald Trump’s administration, the DOJ prosecuted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for failing to register as a foreign agent for work he performed in Ukraine.

Unlike Buretta, however, Manafort, who was eventually sentenced to prison, was not allowed to retroactively file a FARA disclosure to avoid charges being levied against him.

Included in the Thursday FARA filing was a breakdown of how much money Cravath received from Burisma Holdings. From January 2016 to August 2017, the firm was paid nearly $350,000, according to the documents.

The filing from Buretta and his attorneys comes as House Republicans continue to investigate Hunter Biden, who has been accused of violating FARA, wire fraud, money laundering, and other alleged crimes.

Then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden allegedly ‘coerced’ Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky to pay them millions of dollars in exchange for their help in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the company fired, according to allegations contained in an unclassified FBI document released last July by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Grassley said he released the document, which describes an alleged criminal bribery scheme involving Joe Biden and a Ukrainian business executive, so that the American people can ‘read this document for themselves without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.’

The document in question was an FBI-generated FD-1023 form — a confidential human source (CHS) reporting document — that reflects the FBI’s interview with a ‘highly credible’ confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with a top executive of Burisma Holdings over the course of several years starting in 2015. Hunter Biden, at the time, sat on the board of Burisma.

Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and at the time, Hunter had a highly lucrative role on the board, receiving thousands of dollars per month. The then-vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin were not fired.

Biden allies maintain the then-vice president pushed for Shokin’s firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption, and say that his firing, at the time, was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.

The House Oversight Committee next week will hold a meeting to consider a resolution to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress after violating his congressional subpoenas.

The Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Hunter Biden for a closed-door deposition last month as part of the House Republican-led impeachment inquiry against President Biden. He defied the subpoena and held a press conference outside the Capitol complex instead.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

The Israeli Defense Forces raided an alleged Hamas compound inside a Gaza school, finding a weapons cache, toys, and a terrorism-themed puzzle in the structure.

IDF officials announced the Bani Suheila area raid in a statement Saturday, publishing photos of weapons and other materials recovered on site.

‘The forces conducted an operation to neutralize terrorist infrastructure situated within a school in the Bani Suheila area,’ the IDF said in a statement. ‘The soldiers encountered the terrorists, returned fire and eliminated three terrorists who were found with RPG missiles.’

The statement continued, ‘In addition, the soldiers raided terrorist infrastructure and found intelligence information about the Khan Yunis Brigade.’

Among the toys and children’s products discovered in the compound was a puzzle depicting children from Gaza and other regions surrounding Israel firing weapons on the Jewish state.

‘What toys is the Hamas Child Abuser Regime giving children in Gaza to play with? A puzzle that shows a Palestinian gunboat attacking Tel Aviv, a boat of Turkish child soldiers (sorry, aid activists with AK-47s), and an armed attack from Jordan,’ said Israeli Government Spokesman Eylon Levy.

‘Charming stuff,’ he added.

Israel believes that more than 130 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, though the U.S. has cautioned that there is no way to be sure how many of them remain alive.

Israel, the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and Hamas are still in negotiations surrounding a potential second wave of hostage exchanges, though little progress has been made.

Hamas negotiators recently had demanded multiple cease-fires culminating in the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in exchange for the remaining Israeli hostages, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Israel rejected that offer outright, calling it ‘totally off base.’ Now, the terrorist organization is saying it is open to an exchange of 120 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel for 40 of the hostages.

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

The Department of Justice has spent more than three times the amount investigating alleged wrongdoings by former President Donald Trump than it has to probe President Biden’s classified documents case.

The two investigations conducted by Special Counsel Jack Smith into Trump have cost taxpayers upwards of $23 million, while the DOJ’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents has cost taxpayers roughly $6.4 million – a combined total of nearly $30 million.

The figures were revealed Friday in expenditure reports by the DOJ and reflect spending totals by both special counsels from the beginning of April 2023 through the end of September 2023. The totals also included costs sustained by other DOJ agencies related to the investigations.

The expenditure report for Smith’s investigations into Trump revealed that the DOJ had spent approximately $7.3 million on things like compensation and benefits for certain personnel, travel, supplies, rent and additional services.

As for other DOJ agencies that incurred expenses while assisting Smith’s investigations into the former president, the total came out to around $7.2 million. That total stemmed from the use of additional investigative support analysts from other agencies and a security detail for the special counsel ‘when warranted,’ according to the report.

Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and his alleged efforts to interfere with the 2020 election.

The initial expenditure report from the special counsel – which covered mid-November 2022 through the end of March 2023 – revealed that Smith and other agencies within the DOJ had used $9 million in taxpayer dollars to investigate Trump. That total, combined with the total shown in the Friday report, puts the total cost the DOJ has spent investigating the former president at more than $23 million.

Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court to all four federal charges stemming from Smith’s investigation into 2020 election interference and the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Smith also indicted Trump on charges relating to the mishandling of classified documents. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony charges out of that probe.

In contrast to the DOJ’s extreme cost of the Trump investigations, another DOJ report released Friday showed that Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s classified documents case cost taxpayers $2.8 million from the beginning of April 2023 to the end of September 2023.

Other DOJ agencies that supported the Biden probe during the same time period incurred costs of $2.4 million – bringing the total spent on the Biden investigation from April 2023 to September 2023 to $5.2 million.

The initial report from Hur’s investigation showed that the Department of Justice spent roughly $1.2 million between mid-January 2023 and the end of March 2023. That total, combined with totals revealed Friday, brings the DOJ’s total cost for the Biden probe overall to $6.4 million.

Hur, a former U.S. attorney, was appointed last January by Garland to lead the investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents dating back to the Obama administration. Last fall, Biden took part in a voluntary interview with Hur about the matter.

The probe stems from a batch of records from President Biden’s time as vice president, including a ‘small number of documents with classified markings,’ that were discovered at the Penn Biden Center by the president’s personal attorneys on November 2, 2022.

The documents were found in a locked closet while preparing to vacate office space at the center, which the president used from mid-2017 until he began the 2020 campaign.

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday called on Middle East nations to use their influence over extremist groups in the region to contain the conflict in Gaza and prevent ‘an endless cycle of violence.’ 

Blinken spoke late in the day after he met with top Turkish and Greek officials to start a week-long diplomatic tour aimed at preventing the Israel-Hamas war from escalating into a broader conflict.

The United States’ most senior diplomat told reporters it is in the interest of all Middle East countries to contain the fighting. 

‘We want to make sure that countries who feel that way are also using their ties, using their influence, using their relationships with some of the actors that might be involved to keep a lid on things, to make sure that we’re not seeing the spread of conflict,’ he said before flying to Jordan.

Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah said Saturday it launched rockets at Israel, and the Jewish state said it struck a ‘terrorist cell’ in response. 

Blinken emphasized the importance of maintaining security in northern Israel, along the border with Lebanon. 

‘From the perspective of Israel, it’s clearly not interested, does not want escalation … but they also have to be fully prepared to defend themselves,’ he said.

The State Department chief warned that if the Israel-Hamas war expands, the outcome would be ‘an endless cycle of violence … and lives of insecurity and conflict for people in the region.’ 

Earlier Saturday, Blinken spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after meeting with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan earlier.

Blinken and Fidan discussed the war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, as well as Turkey’s process to ratify Sweden’s membership of NATO, Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement. 

The Biden administration hopes to convince Ankara to influence other Arab states against entering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seeking to prevent a wider and more costly war. 

A senior State Department official traveling with Blinken, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Turkey has relationships with many parties in the conflict, a reference to its ties to U.S. adversary Iran and Hamas. 

Erdogan has strongly opposed Israel’s military operation in Gaza and accused the Jewish state of committing war crimes against the 2.3 million Palestinians who live there. After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Erdogan denied that Hamas is a terrorist organization, calling it a ‘liberation group’ that is ‘waging a battle to protect its land and people.’ 

Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 240 hostages back to Gaza in the attacks. 

Israel’s retaliatory war to eliminate Hamas’ governing ability has killed 22,700 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry. However, Hamas officials do not distinguish between civilian and military casualties and their reported figures cannot be independently verified. 

The renewed conflict in Gaza has spilled into the West Bank and been aggravated by Hezbollah terrorists firing rockets at Israeli forces along the northern border with Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen attacking shipping vessels in the Red Sea. 

Blinken’s mission is to persuade Arab states to stop these attacks and make progress in talks on how Gaza could be governed if and when Israel achieves its aim of eradicating Hamas.

Washington wants regional countries, including Turkey, to play a role in reconstruction, governance and potentially security in the Gaza Strip, which has been run by Hamas since 2007, the official told Reuters. 

Blinken is next scheduled to travel to Greece and speak with officials there before bouncing around the Middle East with planned stops in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt and Israel over the next week. 

Reuters contributed to this report.