Hunter Biden, in new memoir, says he wouldn’t repeat his work for Ukrainian firm
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s son Hunter says his service on the board of a Ukrainian gas company — which Republicans tried to turn into a campaign liability during the 2020 presidential race — was not unethical and did not represent a lack of judgment on his part.
But the younger Biden says in his new memoir that he would not do it again because of partisan politics.
“I did nothing unethical, and have never been charged with wrongdoing,” Biden writes in “Beautiful Things,” which is scheduled to be released Tuesday. “In our current political environment, I don’t believe it would make any difference if I took that seat or not. I’d be attacked anyway.
“What I do believe, in this current climate, is that it wouldn’t matter what I did or didn’t do,” he writes. “The attacks weren’t intended for me. They were meant to wound my dad.”
The president’s son chronicles a lifelong battle with alcohol and drug addiction and numerous stints in and out of rehab.
Biden writes that his descent into darkness followed the death of his older brother, Beau, of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46. He ends the book where he currently is in life: sober, living in California with his second wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and their baby son, Beau. Biden also has three daughters from his previous marriage.
Twitter says it is changing its policy on hacked content after an outcry about its handling of an unverified political story about Hunter Biden.
His book’s title, “Beautiful Things,” is an expression that he and his brother would use with each other after his brother’s cancer diagnosis and was meant to stress what was important in life.
During the 2020 campaign, then-President Trump and his allies repeatedly sought to make an issue of Hunter Biden’s work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Trump alleged unspecified shady dealings by both Joe and Hunter Biden despite the lack of evidence of any wrongdoing by either.
Trump ultimately was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House for pushing Ukraine to investigate the Biden family. The Senate, then controlled by Republicans, voted to keep Trump in office.
Hunter Biden writes that his only misjudgment was not considering, back in 2014 when he joined Burisma’s board to help oversee its corporate practices, that Trump would be in the White House three years into the future.
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A lawyer and former lobbyist, he joined Burisma’s board around the time his father was vice president and helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy in Eastern Europe.
Trump and others had insisted without evidence that the younger Biden was exploiting his father’s name, and they raised unsubstantiated charges of corruption.
“Knowing all of that now: No, I would not do it again,” Hunter Biden writes in his memoir. “I wouldn’t take the seat on Burisma’s board. Trump would have to look elsewhere to find a suitable distraction for his impeachable behavior.”
The memoir was in the works before Joe Biden became the front-runner in the Democratic presidential campaign. It was kept under wraps even as Hunter Biden’s business dealings became a fixation of Trump and his allies. Hunter Biden’s finances also became the subject of a Justice Department investigation.
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