Hunter Biden: It was ‘poor judgment’ to join Ukrainian board

Biden, the second son of former Vice President Joe Biden, earned $50,000 a month to serve on the board of Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm, from 2014 to 2019. On Tuesday, while denying doing anything improper, he acknowledged it was “a mistake … in the grand scheme of things.”

“I joined a board, I served honorably. I focused on corporate governance. I did not have any discussions with my father before or after I joined the board as it relates to it other than that brief exchange we had,” he said.

Hunter Biden, a Georgetown University and Yale Law School graduate, had no experience in the energy sector before he was offered the position. On Tuesday, he admitted he would “probably not” have been asked to serve on Burisma’s board if his last name wasn’t Biden, adding he left the company because it was a five-year term.

“Well, because I think, this is what becomes a distraction. Because I have to sit here and answer these questions. And, so, that’s why I’ve committed that I won’t serve on any boards or I won’t work directly for any foreign entities when my dad becomes president,” he said. “I don’t regret being on the board. What I regret is not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the United States that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea, which has, again, been completely debunked by everyone.”

When pressed on whether he was unqualified for the position with Burisma, Biden pushed back.

“I was vice chairman of the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the U.N. World Food Program. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world,” he said.

When it was pointed out that he didn’t have experience with natural gas or with Ukraine, though, Biden still defended getting the gig.

“I think that I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board — if not more,” he claimed.

For months, Giuliani urged Ukraine to investigate the Bidens over Hunter’s position with Burisma and because of Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine as vice president threatening to withhold $1 billion in loans while pushing for Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to be fired. The Biden camp and others have countered that Shokin was widely seen by the United States and Europe — and inside Ukraine — as ineffective in combating corruption. Ukraine’s parliament removed Shokin in 2016.

Trump asked for a “favor” from Ukraine during a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in investigating a conspiracy theory related to the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which determined the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s email systems, an assessment special counsel Robert Mueller agreed with. Trump also urged the Ukrainian leader to look into any Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election and talked about “the other thing,” suggesting the Ukrainians investigate allegations of corruption and the Bidens. Trump urged Zelensky to speak with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, but DOJ made it clear that Barr wasn’t associated with the effort.

Hunter Biden’s position with his Chinese-backed company, BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, has also come under scrutiny in recent months. Trump, Giuliani, and others have pointed to his position with the company — and to a trip he took to China with his father while he was still vice president — as a sign of corruption and nepotism. He announced he’d step down from the firm at the end of October.

In December 2013, the younger Biden flew with his father on Air Force Two on to Beijing, China, where Joe Biden shook hands with Jonathan Li, a Chinese banker and his son’s business associate. Weeks after that meeting, Hunter Biden’s firm announced new business and set a goal of trying to raise $1.5 billion.

“That’s probably why China for so many years has had a sweetheart deal where China rips off the U.S.A., for so many years they’ve been ripping off our country” because of politicians like “Biden where they give the son a billion and a half dollars,” Trump said earlier in October. “You know what they call that? They call that a payoff.”

But Hunter Biden said Tuesday he still hadn’t made any money through the venture.

“No one ever paid me $1.5 billion,” he said. “And if they had, I would not be doing this interview right now.”

[Related: Biden jokes about son Hunter earning $1B in China: ‘I wonder where the hell that money is, man’]

He defended going on that trip to China with his father, claiming that “I have traveled everywhere with my dad, and I went because my daughter was there too.” When asked whether he arranged for his Chinese business associate to shake hands with his father in a Chinese hotel lobby, he seemed to dodge the question a bit.

“I don’t remember, but probably,” he said. “Yeah. I hope so. I hope he did. He was my friend for almost thirteen years. Whether I’m in New York or whether I’m in Washington D.C. and a friend and a business associate is in the hotel, and my dad is staying there, is it inappropriate for me to have coffee with them?”

Hunter Biden’s work with BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company isn’t his only controversial connection to Chinese business. While working with multibillion-dollar Chinese conglomerate CEFC China Energy’s leader Ye Jianming on a natural gas deal in the U.S. worth millions of dollars, he agreed to represent Jianming’s associate, Patrick Ho, who was eventually convicted by the Justice Department for bribing foreign governments. Jianming was reportedly detained in China too.