Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed there was “no evidence” showing his son Hunter Biden did anything wrong by his involvement with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings (Burisma) during an interview in December. However, a recent report from the Senate says that might not be true.
“I don’t know what he was doing. I found out he was on the board after he was on the board,” Biden said in an interview with Axios in 2019.
When pressed on whether Biden believed everything his son did was “kosher,” Biden said he trusted his son.
“I trust my son…” Biden continued, before trying to shift attention to President Donald Trump’s family. “If you want to talk about problems, let’s talk about Trump’s family…There’s not one single bit of evidence, not one little tiny bit, to say anything done [by Hunter Biden] was wrong….I’m not worried about it.”
However, Biden’s advisor Amos Hochstein “had a conversation with the Vice President and his staff” in 2015 about Hunter Biden’s involvement with corrupt Ukranian company Burisma, a report conducted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs shows. (RELATED: Leaked Tapes Reportedly Show Biden Pressuring Ukrainian President To Fire Prosecutor In Return For $1 Billion)
“I wanted to make sure that he [Vice President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media outlets about undermining his message-to try to undermine his [Vice President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma.”
However, Hochstein did not recommend that Hunter leave Burisma’s board because he did not “believe that was my place to have that discussion, one way or the other.”
State Department officials questioned whether Hunter’s work for Burisma was a conflict of interest for Vice President Biden, who became the Obama administration’s chief liaison to Ukraine in 2014 with goals to help root out corruption in the country.
Burisma owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, was under investigation for money laundering and extortion, and likely paid a $7 million bribe to a Ukranian prosecutor in December 2014 after Hunter joined the board, the report said.
The report concluded Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board “hindered the efforts of dedicated career-service individuals who were fighting for anticorruption measures in Ukraine.”
“Because the vice president’s son had a direct link to a corrupt company and its owner, State Department officials were required to maintain situational awareness of Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma,” the report read.
“Unfortunately, U.S. officials had no other choice but to endure the ‘awkward[ness]’ of continuing to push an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine while the vice president’s son sat on the board of a Ukrainian company with a corrupt owner, earning tens of thousands of dollars a month.”
Despite the former vice president’s insistence that his son did nothing wrong, both he and former Secretary of State John Kerry ignored repeated attempts by numerous officials to heed their warnings related to Hunter’s involvement with a corrupt company, the report said.
“The Committees found that neither the Office of the Vice President nor the State Department ever took any action following these complaints,” the report said.
Hochstein now sits on the board of NAFTOGAZ, a Ukranian owned energy company.