ABC is out with an absolutely brutal report this morning
on Joe Biden and his son’s “huge” conflicts of interest stemming from Hunter
Biden’s work in Ukraine and China while Joe was VP.
While Joe Biden was conducting diplomacy in Ukraine and
China, Hunter Biden was hot on his father’s heels cashing in on lucrative
Ukrainian natural gas deals and an investment opportunity with a
government-owned Chinese bank.
This prompted ABC’s Tom Llamas to ask, “Was Hunter Biden
profiting off his dad's work as Vice President and did Joe Biden allow it?”
__________________
ABC NEWS
ARTICLE
Biden sidesteps questions about his son's
foreign business dealings but promises ethics pledge
By Tom Llamas, Luciern Bruggeman & Matthew Mosk | ABC
News
Democratic presidential
candidate Joe Biden declined to answer questions on the campaign
trail this week about his son's overseas business dealings in countries where
the then-vice president was conducting diplomatic work, an issue his political
opponents have already begun to wield against him as he wades into the 2020
presidential campaign.
More than once, after his father engaged in diplomacy on
behalf of the United States in foreign countries, Hunter
Biden conducted business in the same country. At two separate campaign
stops on Monday, Biden avoided questions about his son while his staff blocked
reporters from approaching the candidate.
Biden's campaign did provide ABC News with a statement
saying the former vice president has always adhered to "well-established
executive branch ethics standards," adding that if Biden wins the White
House he will issue an executive order to "address conflicts of interest
of any kind."
"This process will be set out in detail in the
executive order," the statement reads, "that President Biden would
issue on his first day in office."
The ethics pledge follows renewed questions about a pair
of overseas business opportunities involving Hunter Biden – one in Ukraine,
another in China – that already have begun to generate political attacks from
Joe Biden's conservative critics. Ethics experts interviewed by ABC News said
these are legitimate questions about possible past and future conflicts of
interest.
In April of 2014, the then-vice president led a U.S.
delegation to Kiev tasked with rooting out corruption and advocating for
Ukraine to diminish its reliance on Russian oil. The Obama administration had
pledged aid money to support a fledgling Ukrainian administration recovering
from a revolution that ousted the country's previous leader.
"You have to fight the cancer of corruption that is
endemic in your system right now," Biden told the Ukrainian parliament
during the first of several post-revolution visits to the country. "And
with the right investments and the right choices, Ukraine can reduce its energy
dependence and increase its energy security."
Within weeks of his visit, Ukraine's largest energy
producer, Burisma Energy, appointed
Hunter Biden to a paid directorship on the firm's board.
Just months before, in December of 2013, there was a
similar episode when the then-vice president led an Obama administration effort
to tamp down tensions in the Far East. Hunter Biden disembarked from Air Force
Two in Beijing alongside his father, ahead of a series of meetings between the
vice president and several high-ranking members of China's ruling party. Upon
his departure, Joe Biden called Chinese President Xi Jinping a "good
friend."
Within weeks of that visit, Hunter Biden was doing
business there, as a participant in a firm called Bohai Harvest RST. The
corporation formed a novel Chinese-American investment partnership that
involved such Chinese state-owned firms as the Bank of China. Reports at the time said they sought to raise $1.5
billion.
In response to questions from ABC News, Hunter Biden
maintained that he and his father never talked about his overseas ventures.
"At no time have I discussed with my father the
company's business, or my board service," Hunter Biden said in statement
forwarded to ABC News by his attorney. "Any suggestion to the contrary is
just plain wrong."
An attorney for Hunter Biden told ABC News the vice
president's son merely accompanied his daughter, Finnegan Biden, on the Air
Force Two trip to Beijing and conducted no business during the visit.
Robert Weissman, the president of progressive watchdog
group Public Citizen and a frequent critic of business dealings by President
Donald Trump's children -- including the Trump Organization's ongoing
development projects overseas -- told ABC News that it can be challenging for
the adult children of well-known political figures to carve out careers that
don't pose ethics concerns, but he considers Hunter Biden's decisions concerning.
"At absolute minimum there's a huge appearance of
conflict, and there's every reason to think that the investors that he‘s
working with want him partnering with them because he's the son of the
then-vice president and now presidential candidate," Weissman said.
"[Joe Biden] should have encouraged his son to not take these
positions."
Biden defends his son
The Ukrainian energy firm Burisma tapped Hunter Biden --
a Yale-trained attorney who worked at the Manhattan-based law firm Boies
Schiller Flexner LLP -- to lead its legal unit and "provide support for
the company among international organizations," according to the company's
announcement at the time.
Hunter Biden and his associate at a business entity
called Rosemont Seneca Partners -- where Hunter Biden was a managing partner --
both obtained board seats, and according to banking records reviewed by ABC
News, the firm began collecting $166,666 payments each month.
In a statement to ABC News, Biden said "at no
time" was he "in charge of the company's legal affairs" and said
he "earned [his] qualifications for such a role based on [his] extensive
prior board service." Hunter Biden had served on other corporate boards,
including as vice chairman of the board overseeing Amtrak. He had no known experience
in Ukraine or the highly competitive energy field, but said in his statement
that he joined the board "to help reform Burisma's practices of
transparency, corporate governance and responsibility."
…
More details of his work for Burisma surfaced in the 2018
book "Secret Empires" by conservative author Peter Schweizer, and as
Biden moved closer to announcing his bid for the White House, news reports
began focusing greater attention on the burgeoning controversy. Reports in The
Hill and The New York Times noted that the vice president's reform campaign in
Ukraine included an effort to call for the dismissal of Viktor Shokin, then the
country's controversial chief prosecutor. The reports noted that Shokin had
ostensibly been leading an investigation into Burisma and its founder, Mykola
Zlochevsky, for possible financial crimes.
Both Zlochevsky and the company have denied wrongdoing
and neither have faced charges, but in an interview with ABC News, Shokin
maintained his suspicions about the vice president's motives, accusing Biden of
promoting his dismissal for personal reasons. He insisted he had "no
doubt" Biden wanted him gone in an effort to protect his son's new
employer.
"Biden was acting not like a U.S. vice president,
but as an individual," Shokin told ABC News, "like the individual
interested in having me removed -- having me gone so that I did not interfere
in the Burisma investigation."
…
Even one of the activists Biden's team asked ABC News to
contact had deep reservations about Hunter Biden's decision to accept a board
seat at Burisma.
…
Lingering questions
Ukraine is not the only foreign territory in which there
are lingering questions about business conducted by Hunter Biden.
His exact role in the Chinese investment fund Bohai
Harvest RST remains unclear. The firm's website described the venture as being
"sponsored" by the government-controlled Bank of China, and
securities filings in the U.S. say the fund was "to focus on mergers and
acquisitions, and investment in and reforms of state-owned enterprise." …
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