Thread by @JewhadiTM

In Hunter Biden’s career from Ukraine to China, his father is often nearby  washingtonpost.com/politics/as-vi…

As Joe Biden announced in April that he was seeking the presidency, his son Hunter quietly left his position here with Ukraine’s largest private gas company after serving for five years.

From the moment Hunter Biden took the job in 2014, Republicans have said it presented a conflict of interest for the Bidens. Joe Biden, then the vice president, was the point person on Ukraine policy in President Barack Obama’s administration.

Biden offered U.S. aid to Ukraine to increase gas production, which could benefit the Ukrainian energy industry.

Much of Hunter Biden’s career has coincided with his father’s work as a senator and vice president.

He has been a lobbyist for clients with interests before Congress; a senior vp at a bank, MBNA, that was a major contributor to his father; and a board member of a company backed by Chinese entities, joining the firm just after his father met with leaders of that country

All of those positions have led to criticism from Republicans, but it was Hunter Biden’s decision to join the board of Burisma Holdings that has drawn the heaviest fire.

At the time, Ukraine was in the midst of crisis. In February 2014, as revolution swept the streets, President Viktor Yanukovych fled. Russia, which was allied with Yanukovych, viewed his ouster as illegal.

That March, Russian forces took control of Crimea and then the southeast of Ukraine, dividing the nation. The Obama administration decried the Russian intervention, and Joe Biden arrived in the country in April as vice president, bearing gifts.

A key part of U.S. strategy focused on the way Russia could cut off part of Ukraine’s energy supply. He repeated his frequent plea that Ukraine’s natural gas production be increased, and he announced an aid package designed to enable Ukraine to boost energy production.

“Imagine where you’d be today if you were able to tell Russia: ‘Keep your gas,’ ” Biden said. “It would be a very different world.”

As it turned out, that was a world Hunter Biden wanted to join.

Just a few weeks after his father’s visit to Ukraine, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings. His friend and business partner, Devon Archer, also joined the board, saying the company had the potential to be another ExxonMobil.

White House officials insisted at the time that there was no connection between the vice president’s travel to Ukraine and his son’s job.

Hunter Biden, in his statement to The Post, said he joined the company after speaking with another board member, former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski. The former president could not be reached for comment.

“We both believed that Ukraine’s independence was central to stemming the tide of Putin’s attack on the principles of a democratic Europe, and that Ukraine’s energy production, particularly natural gas, was a central part of that independence,” Hunter Biden said.

“At no time have I discussed with my father the company’s business or my board service,” he added.

In 2015, Western officials and Ukrainian activists began raising questions about whether Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was properly investigating corruption allegations in the country, particularly those involving the previous administration.

Biden later said that he had gotten Shokin fired by threatening Ukrainian government officials that he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion,’ ” Biden said in recounting the incident last year.

Had he remained in his post, Shokin said, he would have questioned Hunter Biden. “All I can say is that the appointment of Hunter Biden as a member of the Board of Directors of the energy company is rather questionable from the point of view of effectiveness.

After all, this person had no work experience either in Ukraine or in the energy sector,” he wrote.

Yoshiko M. Herrera, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who is an expert in Russia and Eurasian policy, said in an interview that Hunter Biden’s service with Burisma is a serious issue.

“It’s a big deal. It’s the VP, who is the point person of the Obama admin’s policy on Ukraine, and his son is suddenly hired to be a director on the board of Ukraine’s largest private gas producer.”

Questions about what Hunter Biden did with the money paid by the Ukrainian company have arisen as a result of disclosures made during his 2017 divorce from his wife, Kathleen.

In her filing in the case, she alleged Hunter had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of joint assets “on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs & gifts for women with whom he had sexual relations)“ leaving them with no money to pay bills.

Kathleen Biden’s filing said that “outstanding debts are shocking and overwhelming,” with “maxed-out credit card debt, double mortgages on both real properties they own, and tax debt of at least $313,970.”

Hunter Biden said in his statement to The Post that he ended his work with the Burisma board because “my qualifications and work” were being unfairly attacked by Joe Biden’s political enemies.

“These distortions of reality will not distract my father, nor make me question my judgment in my initial decision to join the board of Burisma to do the good work necessary for the benefit of the company and Ukraine,” he said.

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