President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden told Congress on Wednesday that a Ukrainian energy conglomerate was paying him to make the company more “Western-looking.”
Hunter Biden gave a closed-door deposition Wednesday with the House Oversight Committee as part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. The first son originally defied a congressional subpoena and refused to participate in a closed-door deposition in December 2023. In addition to lawmakers grilling Hunter Biden about whether his father was involved in his foreign business dealings, the first son also detailed his responsibilities while at Burisma. (RELATED: Here’s All The Evidence Connecting Joe Biden To Hunter Biden’s Foreign Business Dealings)
“What types of services did you provide on the board? I mean, you were making a million a year, Burisma. What were you doing for that million?” a congressional member asked, according to the testimony.
“And my responsibilities were like any other board member, to attend board meetings, to be aware of what the management was doing to try to strive for, you know, accountability, transparency, openness in terms of the reporting, to go through the financials and make certain that the financials were certified by a CPA,” Hunter Biden responded.
“The whole idea was that it was a private company that was operating in Ukraine for a very long period of time in that part of the world, which doesn’t have the same high standards that the West does. And that was my goal in trying to provide a more Western-looking and acting company,” he continued.
Hunter Biden (4R), son of U.S. President Joe Biden, and his lawyer Abbe Lowell attend a House Oversight Committee meeting on January 10, 2024 in Washington, DC. The committee is meeting today as it considers citing him for Contempt of Congress. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
The Ukrainian energy company hired the first son in the spring of 2014 to serve on the company’s board. He was paid more than $80,000 per month while his father, who was the vice president at the time, was in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, bank records show.
Hunter’s salary appeared to have been slashed when former President Donald Trump took office in 2017, an indictment showed.
“In or around April 2014, the Defendant joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings Limited,” the indictment reads. Prior to Hunter Biden’s position with Burisma, he lacked experience in the energy industry and Ukraine affairs.
“Burisma agreed to pay the Defendant an annual salary of approximately $1,000,000, to be paid in monthly disbursements. In March 2017, Burisma reduced his compensation to approximately $500,000 a year but he continued to serve on the board of directors until in or around April 2019. As a result, he received a total of approximately $1,002,016 in 2016, $630,556 in 2017, $491,939 in 2018, and $160,207 in 2019,” the indictment adds.
Hunter Biden’s closed-door testimony with House Republicans failed to produce any significant, new lines of inquiry into their impeachment effort against President Biden, though the first son did appear to continuously have lapses in his memory while often contradicting himself. The first son noted that he “could not recall” information about his meetings and business deals at least 29 times but was confident that his dad was not involved in any way.
“I am here today to provide the committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business, not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions, domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist, never,” Biden said in his opening statement. He then went on to say that he “did not recall” information about certain business meetings.