Hunter Biden

After graduating from law school, Biden took a position at MBNA America, a major bank holding company which was also a major contributor to his father's political campaigns.[14] By 1998, he had risen to the rank of executive vice president.[14][19] From 1998 to 2001, he served in the United States Department of Commerce, focusing on ecommerce policy.[20] Biden became a lobbyist in 2001, co-founding the firm of Oldaker, Biden & Belair.[21] According to Adam Entous of The New Yorker, Biden and his father established a relationship in which "Biden wouldn't ask Hunter about his lobbying clients, and Hunter wouldn't tell his father about them."[14] In 2006, Biden and his uncle, James Biden, attempted to buy Paradigm, a hedge-fund group, but the deal fell apart before completion.[14] That same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to a five-year term on the board of directors of Amtrak.[22] He was a board member from July 2006 until he resigned in February 2009,[23] and the board's vice chairman from July 2006 to January 2009,[24] leaving both roles shortly after his father became vice president. He had realized during his father's vice presidential campaign that it was time for his lobbying activities to end.[14]

In 2009, Biden, along with Devon Archer and John Kerry's stepson Christopher Heinz, founded the investment firm Rosemont Seneca.[21]

He also joined the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP,[14] and founded Eudora Global, a venture capital firm.[18]

In May 2013, Biden's application for a position in the U.S. Navy Reserve was approved.[25] At age 43, Biden was accepted as part of a program that allows a limited number of applicants with desirable skills to receive commissions and serve in staff positions.[26] He received an age-related waiver and a waiver due to a past drug-related incident, and was sworn in as a direct commission officer.[25] Joe Biden administered his commissioning oath in a White House ceremony.[14]

The following month, Biden tested positive for cocaine during a urinalysis test and was subsequently discharged.[27] Biden attributed the result to smoking cigarettes he had accepted from other smokers, only later suspecting they had been laced with the drug.[14] He chose not to appeal the matter as it was unlikely that the panel would believe his explanation given his history with drugs, and also due to the likelihood of news leaking to the press, though it was ultimately revealed to The Wall Street Journal by a Navy official who provided information to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.[14][25]

In 2013, Biden, Devon Archer, and Chinese businessman Jonathan Li founded BHR Partners, a business focused on investing Chinese capital in companies based outside of China.[14] In September 2019, President Trump falsely claimed that Biden "walk[ed] out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund" and earned "millions" of dollars from the BHR deal, while Trump was also accusing Biden of malfeasance in Ukraine.[28][29] Trump publicly called on China to investigate Hunter Biden's business activities there while his father was vice president.[30][31] On October 13, 2019, citing "the barrage of false charges" by the President, Hunter Biden announced his resignation from the Board of Directors for BHR Partners effective at the end of the month.[32][12] According to his lawyer, Biden had "not received any compensation for being on BHR's board of directors," nor had he received any return on his equity share in BHR.[33] Biden's lawyer, George Mesires, told The Washington Post that BHR Partners had been "capitalized from various sources with a total of 30 million RMB [Chinese Renminbi], or about $4.2 million, not $1.5 billion."[28]

In April 2014 after the Ukrainian revolution, Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, one of the largest independent natural gas producers in Ukraine[14] owned by an Ukrainian oligarch and former politician Mykola Zlochevsky who faced a money laundering investigation that time.[34][35][36] Biden, then an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner, was hired to help Burisma with corporate governance best practices, and a consulting firm in which Biden is a partner was also retained by Burisma.[37][38][39] Chris Heinz, John Kerry's stepson, opposed his partners Devon Archer and Hunter Biden joining the board in 2014 due to the reputational risk.[35] Biden served on the board of Burisma until his term expired in April 2019,[38] receiving compensation of up to $50,000 per month in some months.[38][37] Because Vice President Biden played a major role in U.S. policy towards Ukraine, some Ukrainian anti-corruption advocates[40][41] and Obama administration officials expressed concern that Hunter Biden's having joined the board could create the appearance of a conflict of interest and undermine Vice President Biden's anti-corruption work in Ukraine.[14][35] While serving as vice president, Joe Biden joined other Western leaders in encouraging the government of Ukraine to fire the country's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin,[42][43] who was widely criticized for blocking corruption investigations.[44][45] The Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Shokin in March 2016.[46][47]

In 2019, President Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claimed that Vice President Biden had actually sought the dismissal of Shokin in order to protect his son and Burisma Holdings,[48][40] however, there is no evidence that this was what happened and it was the official policy of the United States and the European Union to seek Shokin's removal.[42][49][50] There has also been no evidence produced of wrongdoing done by Hunter Biden in Ukraine.[51] The Ukrainian anti-corruption investigation agency stated in September 2019 that the current investigation of Burisma was restricted solely to investigating the period of 2010 to 2012, before Hunter Biden joined Burisma in 2014.[52] Shokin in May 2019 claimed that he was fired because he had been actively investigating Burisma,[53] but U.S. and Ukrainian officials have stated that the investigation into Burisma was dormant at the time of Shokin's dismissal.[35][53][54] Ukrainian and United States State Department sources have maintained that Shokin was fired for failing to address corruption, including within his office.[49][41][55]

In July 2019, Trump ordered the freezing of $391 million in military aid[56] shortly before a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Zelensky to initiate an investigation of the Bidens.[57][58] Trump falsely told Zelensky that "[Joe] Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution" of his son; Joe Biden did not stop any prosecution, did not brag about doing so, and there is no evidence his son was ever under investigation.[59] On September 24, 2019, the United States House of Representatives initiated a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump on the grounds that he may have sought to use U.S. foreign aid and the Ukrainian government to damage Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.[60][61]

Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko said in May 2019 that Hunter Biden had not violated Ukrainian law. After Lutsenko was replaced by Ruslan Riaboshapka as prosecutor general, Lutsenko and Ryaboshapka said in September and October 2019 respectively that they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.[42][62][63]

During 2019 and into 2020, Republican senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley quietly investigated Biden's involvement with Burisma, as well as allegations that Democrats colluded with the Ukrainian government to interfere in the 2016 election. Republican senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, privately expressed concerns to the senators that their inquiries could assist efforts by Russian intelligence to spread disinformation to disrupt American domestic affairs. American intelligence officials briefed senators in late 2019 about Russian efforts to frame Ukraine for 2016 election interference. Johnson said he would release findings in spring 2020, as Democrats would be selecting their 2020 presidential nominee. Trump tweeted a press report about the investigations, later stating that he would make allegations of corruption by the Bidens a central theme of his re-election campaign.[64][65] Johnson sought to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, an ally of Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a former contractor with a public affairs firm that had worked for Burisma, but in March 2020 abruptly postponed a Homeland Security Committee vote on the subpoena, ostensibly to allow committee members to receive additional briefings on the matter.[66] CNN reported that the day before the scheduled vote the FBI briefed committee staffers on issues related to Telizhenko's subpoena. Vladislav Davidzon, the editor of Ukrainian magazine The Odessa Review, told CNN that in 2018 Telizhenko offered him money to lobby Republican senators in support of pro-Russian television stations in Ukraine.[67]

Biden helped Chinese businessman Ye Jianming negotiate a deal for Ye's company CEFC China Energy to make a $40 million investment in a liquefied natural gas project at Monkey Island, Louisiana. Ye gifted Biden a 2.8 carat diamond, which Biden said he gave away. Biden agreed to legally represent Ye's deputy, Patrick Ho, for investigations in the United States. Ho was eventually arrested and jailed in the U.S. for bribery. In 2018, the CEFC deal collapsed after Ye was detained in China, reportedly for corruption.[14][21]