Hunter Biden’s confessions just keep getting bigger and better. Recently, he had revealed that he “probably smoked more parmesan cheese than anyone you know”. And now, he has come up with a more consequential and serious confession. The 51-year old son of the sitting US President has admitted that he got a job on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma due to his father’s name.
Hunter Biden has revealed that Burisma viewed his family name as ‘gold’ when the Ukrainian firm hired him in 2014 because it is ‘synonymous with democracy and transparency’ and hoped to capitalise on that reputation while trying to work against Russian aggression in Crimea. The reward for Hunter Biden was actually quite generous. He was paid up to $50,000 per month by the gas firm despite his lack of experience in the energy sector.
Yet, Hunter Biden denied having drawn any leverage out of his connections with his father Joe Biden, who at the time was then US Vice President and leading Barack Obama’s policy on Ukraine.
Hunter Biden expects us to believe that while he was working for Burisma, his day-to-day was ‘100% limited to… corporate governance and transparency’. However, he does admit that being a Biden had ‘opened doors that wouldn’t be opened up to other people’. So, basically being the son of the former US Vice President got Hunter a job at a Ukrainian energy firm. Yet, he said that it was ‘both a privilege and a burden’.
Asked by the BBC whether his father’s reputation helped him get the Burmisa job, he replied, ‘I think it played a large part.’
Hunter Biden has put up a sham defence to the allegations of favouritism against him. Blaming Russia for the issue, he said, “Right at that time, the Russians had invaded and taken Crimea and they were after the natural resources and the pipeline.”
Hunter added, “And I know that Burisma wanted to do one thing: They wanted to create a bulwark against that Russian aggression, they knew they had to expand internationally and into other sectors to diversify and protect themselves.”
Hunter did also speak about his family equations and how his father pulled him out of alcoholism and drug abuse, which might be a method of appealing to the popular sentiment.
But the core issues remain. It needs to be answered if Joe Biden’s official position did help his son Hunter Biden in winning undue favours and whether his lack of experience got set off with his popular last name. There is a lot beneath the father-son relationship between the Bidens which at least looks amiss. Hunter diaries are thus bound to keep haunting the Democrats and the Biden administration. And the latest confessions only make it worse.
