Hunter Biden’s lawyer announced in a statement on Sunday that the son of former Vice President, Joe Biden, would step down from the board of a Chinese private equity firm in which he had invested only recently. He is the figure at the heart of the conspiracy, which involved President Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate the former vice president. According to Trump’s allegations, which are not backed by any evidence, Joe Biden leveraged the power of his position to assist his sons in managing his business interests in Ukraine. Trump also accused Biden of helping his son in making a large business deal in China.
The calls made by President Donald Trump to China and the Ukraine for investigating these allegations sparked a political controversy that brought about an impeachment inquiry into the president. Joe Biden, on the other hand, has maintained that he didn’t take advantage of his position as vice president and denied all claims about his son benefitting from his office. The younger Biden realized that his business dealings in China were only heightening the scrutiny on his father. Therefore, he defended his own actions and stepped down, something he conveyed through his lawyer, George Mesires.
In the statement, the lawyer explained how going forward, Hunter was planning to avoid even the slight appearance of any conflict of interest. The lawyer wrote that the first thing Hunter was going to do was to cease all dealings with any foreign-owned companies in the event that his father manages to win the 2020 presidential elections. Ahead of this event, Hunter would be stepping down from the board of a private equity firm, BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, which is backed by Chinese companies. Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, both have claimed that Hunter took advantage of his father’s post of vice president for earning $1.5 billion from Chinese equity investors.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this was the amount that the company had been hoping to raise via fundraising, something it failed to achieve. According to Hunter Biden, he hasn’t made any profits from all his dealings with the company. The statement states that he was unpaid for all the board work. As far as his stake in BHR is concerned, he acquired it in 2017 and it involved a personal investment of $420,000. It was stated that no return on investment had been received and Biden had no role when it came to decision making in the company.
To avoid any further questions about whether his work creates a conflict of interest for his father, Biden said in the statement that he was planning to resign from the board of BHR by the end of this month. However, it didn’t mention if he would also sell his stake in the company. Before President Donald Trump started attacking the Bidens over the younger Biden’s dealings in China, he and his lawyer were focused on his dealings in Ukraine. Hunter Biden has dealings with a natural gas producer, Burisma Holdings Limited, in Ukraine.
As a matter of fact, Hunter’s board position in Burisma is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into the president. On 25th July, Trump had placed a call to Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly-elected president of Ukraine and repeatedly asked him to investigate the Biden family. Since then, in all his public remarks, Trump has argued that Hunter used the board position to enrich himself. He has also alleged that in order to protect his son, the then vice president Joe Biden put a stop to an investigation into one of the owners of Burisma, who had been accused of money laundering.
However, there is no evidence for supporting these allegations and claims. Hunter Biden had a position on Burisma’s board from April 2014 to April 2019 and the company had already been under investigation since then. Moreover, like most of the international community, Joe Biden had also advocated for launching more aggressive and thorough anti-corruption investigations in Ukraine. In the statement released by the younger Biden on Sunday, Mesires has argued that the only reason Hunter was appointed on the Burisma board was due to which experience of serving on other boards.
Mesires said that Hunter hadn’t done anything wrong and hadn’t been involved in any illegal activity while he was serving on Burisma’s board. During his five-year term, the company had been extensively scrutinized by law enforcement agencies, both local and foreign, but Hunter hadn’t been blamed for any wrongdoing. It should also be noted that Hunter had also served on other boards, including Amtrak. Trump and other fellow Republicans claim that Hunter didn’t have the necessary experience to be on any board at all, which somehow serves as further evidence of his wrongdoing on the part of Joe Biden.
Moreover, there is a fine line between the cushy jobs that are given to relatives of politicians and other Washington insiders and true corruption. Even if Hunter Biden’s entire career is based on the fact that he is Joe Biden’s son, there is nothing illegal about it. Nonetheless, the fact that the son has not done more than relying on his family name for advancing his businesses has made those deals a political cudgel. For instance Trump’s son Eric attended a rally in Minneapolis on Thursday and let the attendees into a rant of ‘Lock him up’, a mantra similar to the famous chants about Hilary Clinton in 2016.
Other than that, the President himself has tried connecting Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine and China for positing something about a global conspiracy and is continuously calling on both countries to investigate him. Due to this, an impeachment inquiry has been initiated by the House Democrats. While he is fighting this inquiry, Trump hasn’t stopped from attacking Joe Biden and his political aspirations by constantly bringing up this matter. The inquiry has intensified in the last few weeks and Hunter is keeping a low profile and released the statement to eliminate any conflicts of interest.
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