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Post by Admin on Nov 13, 2019 22:04:37 GMT
The son of former US Vice-President Joe Biden has defended his foreign business dealings amid attacks by the White House and increasing media scrutiny. Hunter Biden - who has had business ties in Ukraine and China in recent years - told ABC news that he had done "nothing wrong". But he admitted to "poor judgment", leaving him open to political attacks. His foreign work - and Donald Trump's intervention - have sparked impeachment proceedings against the president. What did he say? Breaking his silence on his foreign business dealings, Hunter Biden, 49, dismissed claims of impropriety. "Did I do anything improper? No, and not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever. I joined a board, I served honourably," Mr Biden said, adding that he did not discuss such business with his father. But Mr Biden acknowledged the possible political ramifications of his work, saying his failure to do so previously demonstrated "poor judgment". "Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah," he said. "But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not." Mr Biden stressed his record on the board of the UN World Food Programme and work for US corporations to defend his lucrative role as a board member for a Ukrainian gas company. "I think that I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board, if not more," Mr Biden said. But he acknowledged the appointment may have resulted from his father's clout. "I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden," he said.
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Post by Admin on Nov 13, 2019 22:44:09 GMT
A Ukrainian company that employed Hunter Biden paid more than $450,000 to a prominent Washington think tank, including picking up the tab for energy-related conferences as part of a campaign to burnish its image in the United States after it was accused by Western officials of corruption.
Burisma’s support of the Atlantic Council was detailed last week by the Wall Street Journal, which said the company had given the think tank $100,000 per year for three years starting in 2016. The council lists Burisma as a contributor on its website.
The Atlantic Council told Yahoo News Tuesday that in addition to the $100,000 given annually by Burisma, the company “also reimbursed speaker travel and event costs, which ... amounted to around [$50,000 to $70,000] per year.”
In the public impeachment proceedings starting Wednesday, Republicans, led by House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., will likely focus on Burisma to justify efforts by President Trump and his associates to pressure the Ukrainian government to publicly announce it was investigating the company. Republicans have already delved deep into the dealings of Burisma in closed-door depositions over the past month.
The Democrat-led impeachment inquiry in the House is based on the allegation that because Trump wanted the Ukrainians to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden — a leading rival for the presidency — he attempted “to coerce a foreign nation to engage in political investigations designed to help his campaign,” as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., put it on Tuesday.
There is also the issue of an Atlantic Council-sponsored trip that brought a dozen or so congressional staffers to Ukraine in August. The trip included Republican and Democratic staffers, but one — Thomas Eager — worked for Schiff’s Intelligence Committee, and the group at one point met with Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine.
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Post by Admin on Nov 14, 2019 3:41:42 GMT
After weeks of conducting hearings in private, the House impeachment inquiry is going public this week. But if the Democrats stage-managing this affair have their way, there will be one element of their presidential-misconduct allegations that won’t be part of the show: Hunter Biden. Democrats believe that the vice-presidential son’s Ukraine shenanigans are irrelevant to impeachment. They want the hearings to be entirely focused on their accusation that President Trump threatened to withhold American military aid to force Kiev to investigate a political rival. They say that questions about what Hunter did or didn’t do, and what his father knew and when he knew it, are just a conspiracy theory floated by Trump and his followers to confuse the American people. But even if you buy the Democrats’ premise that Trump’s request was not merely inappropriate but illegal and a crime so terrible that it justifies impeachment, this makes no sense. How can the House examine this matter without probing Trump’s motivation for requesting that Ukraine investigate the Bidens? Biden’s younger and wayward son was being paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to be on the board of a Ukrainian energy company — despite having exactly zero qualifications for the post other than his last name. It is also a matter of record that President Barack Obama tasked Joe Biden with managing US relations with Ukraine at the time. We also know that “Ukraine’s energy sector — the country’s crucial geopolitical engine — was a central point of contention between the Obama administration and Kiev,” as The New York Times reported last week. So if Trump — rightly or wrongly — believed there was something fishy about this and wanted Ukraine to dig into it, why wouldn’t Americans want to hear about it?
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Post by Admin on Nov 20, 2019 4:54:22 GMT
Mark Heminway of 'Real Clear Investigations' on what ties Hunter Biden to the center of the impeachment inquiry. #Tucker #FoxNews Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. questioned Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer who works for the National Security Council, and Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, on Nov. 19, in a public hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Vindman and Williams both listened in on a July phone call in which Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Stefanik asked several questions about the concerns on Hunter Biden's position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, in 2016. "Do you agree that Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma has the potential of the appearance of a conflict of interest?" Stefanik asked. "Certainly the potential," Vindman said. Williams also said yes.
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Post by Admin on Nov 21, 2019 8:03:34 GMT
Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic candidate, can welcome a sixth grandchild into his family after a DNA test confirmed that his son Hunter was the father of an an Arkansas "Baby Doe." The new family member marked a second landmark for Biden on Wednesday, who also turned 77. Testing found “with scientific certainty” that Joe Biden’s son fathered the child, according to a motion filed Wednesday. He “is not expected to challenge the results of the DNA test or the testing process,” the filing said. “Baby Doe’s paternal grandfather, Joe Biden, is seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States of America (he has already filed for the March 2020 Arkansas primary). He is considered by some to be the person most likely to win his party’s nomination and challenge President Trump on the ballot in 2020,” the filing added. The court document also said members of the Biden family were eligible to be protected by Secret Service. Biden, 49, agreed to take the paternity last month after 28-year-old Lunden Roberts claimed he was the father of her one-year-old child. Biden has publicly denied he was the father, but Roberts said Biden had admitted otherwise to her in private. The name and gender of the child in question is not known. The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner's request for comment. www.scribd.com/document/436073802/Hunter-Biden-is-the-FatherHunter Biden is the father of three daughters — Naomi, 24, Finnegan, 19, and Maisy, 18 — from his 24-year marriage to Kathleen Buhle. The two divorced in 2017. Joe Biden has two other grandchildren, Natalie, 15, and Robert "Hunter" II, 13, whose father was Beau Biden, who died in 2015. He has since dated the wife of his late brother, Beau Biden, and married Melissa Cohen, a filmmaker from South Africa, earlier this year. Roberts's attorney, Clinton Lancaster, said that she wants to avoid the media spotlight. “She really does not want this to be a media spectacle. She does not want this to affect Joe Biden's campaign. She just wants this baby to get financial support from the baby’s father,” Lancaster said about why Roberts filed a petition for paternity and support. Roberts attended college at Western Illinois University, playing for the college’s basketball team before transferring to Arkansas State University, where she graduated in 2014 with a degree in interdisciplinary studies. She was living in Washington, D.C., and Virginia from 2015 to 2018, according to public records, which would have been the time when the child was conceived.
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