Saturday, President Trump tweeted a video of the news media covering the controversy surrounding Joe Biden and his son’s business dealings with the Ukraine.
According to a new report from Breitbart, Hunter Biden’s $83k a month salary from Ukranian oil and gas giant Burisma brings up more questions.
This is the real and only story! pic.twitter.com/4z8eOcm6PA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2019
Breitbart reports the hefty salary that Hunter Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, drew while serving on the board of directors of a Ukrainian oil and gas giant is raising questions not only about his role with the company, but also about if he profited from his father’s political influence.
The younger Biden, who has a history of getting rich from entities tied to his father, is at center of controversy after President Donald Trump suggested the Ukrainian government look into his business dealings in the country. Although the former vice president has attempted to paint the issue as an abuse of power on Trump’s part, many have noted the unanswered questions surrounding his son’s tenure at Burisma points to serious conflict of interests, if not outright corruption.
The most prominent and perplexing question is how and why Hunter Biden was appointed to the company’s board of directors in the first place. As Peter Schweizer, senior contributor at Breitbart News, detailed in his book, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, Hunter Biden had no prior experience with either the energy industry or Ukraine before joining Burisma in April 2014. In fact, his background in investment banking, lobbying, and hedge fund management paled in comparison to current and past members of the company’s board of directors.
At the time of his appointment, ethics watchdogs highlighted the younger Biden’s lack of qualifications but were more concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest. In particular, many worried Hunter Biden’s ascension to the board of directors, a position that paid at times more than $83,000 per month, was related to his father’s position as the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.
The poor optics not only raised flags among ethics watchdogs, but also with Hunter Biden’s own business partners. Christopher Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry and co-owner of an investment firm with Hunter Biden in 2014, rushed to play damage control with State Department officials at the time of the appointment, according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Adding to concerns is the fact that at the time Hunter Biden joined Burisma, the company was seen as actively courting western leaders to prevent further scrutiny of its business practices. The same month Hunter Biden was tapped for the group’s board, the government of Great Britain froze accounts belonging to Burisma founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, under suspicion of money laundering. Zlochevsky, a former Ukrainian minister of natural resources, would later be accused of corruption for using his office to approve oil and gas licenses to companies under his control.
Joe Biden’s role in the entire matter has only increased suspicions of conflicting interests. As the sitting vice president, Joe Biden led the Obama administration’s response to the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. In that role, he pushed billions of dollars in aid to the Ukrainian government, some of which allegedly was filtered to Burisma.
More troubling, however, is an episode that took place in 2016, when Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, the country’s top prosecutor.
Officially, the former vice president has claimed his threat to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine if Shokin was not fired came from the Obama administration, which had lost confidence in the prosecutor’s abilities to root out corruption.
Read more here.
This article was written by the staff of TheConservativeOpinion.com
Source: theconservativeopinion
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