Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden insisted during the final presidential debate on Thursday that his handling of Ukraine policy during the Obama administration was above par. He even went so far as to say that everyone who testified against President Trump during the House’s impeachment hearing approved of his work in Ukraine, despite the fact that his son, Hunter Biden, sat on the board of the top Ukrainian oil company at the time.
This is not true. The State Department raised concerns about Joe Biden’s handling of Ukraine policy back in 2015, when Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent said Hunter Biden’s seat on the Burisma board “looks terrible” for the Obama administration. Kent expanded on this during Trump’s impeachment hearing, noting that he warned the White House “that there was the possibility of a perception of a conflict of interest” when he first heard about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. But when he raised these concerns to Joe Biden’s office, he was told the vice president didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with Hunter Biden.
Another official who testified during the impeachment proceedings — Amos Hochstein, the Obama administration’s special envoy for energy policy — also raised the issue with the former vice president, according to a report by the New Yorker, reminding Joe Biden that his son’s position with Burisma could undermine the United States’s anti-corruption efforts in the region.
In short, it does not take much to recognize that the vice president should not intervene in the legal landscape of a country in which his son has a financial stake. This was a serious conflict of interest, and it raises ethical and legal questions. Biden ought to answer them honestly. But if Thursday night is any indication, we should not expect much.
