5 things to know about Joe Biden

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Thursday, March 12, 2020

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. | REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

5. Hunter Biden Ukraine controversy

Over the last year, Biden has faced conflict-of-interest questions regarding his son Hunter’s position on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, a position he held from 2014 to 2019 and was paid $600,000 each year.

In 2019, Joe Biden was accused by President Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, of trying to help his son’s business interests in Ukraine by interfering in a Ukrainian investigation.

Reuters, which interviewed dozens of people including former prosecutors in Ukraine, reported that Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma was to provide advice on legal issues and corporate finance. The news outlet further reported that Hunter Biden never visited Ukraine for company business during his five-year tenure on the board. Hunter Biden also had no experience in the energy industry.

Giuliani accused Joe Biden of bribing the president of Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was leading a corruption investigation into Burisma. Giuliani had urged Ukraine to investigate the activities of Joe and Hunter Biden.

In 2018, Joe Biden said during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that he withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine as an attempt to force the Ukrainian government to remove its top prosecutor.

In light of the accusations, Joe and Hunter Biden have denied any wrongdoing. The former vice president's campaign has said that Biden called for the removal of the prosecutor in 2016 because of his inability to tackle corruption in Ukraine.

"My son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong," Biden insisted in October.

A Ukrainian official and four former American officials who specialized in Ukraine and Europe told USA Today that the prosecutor was ousted because he wasn't investigating corruption by the Ukrainian politicians.

Pressure for the prosecutor’s firing also came from European politicians, Republicans, and the International Monetary Fund.

Former Ukraine prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko told Reuters that Hunter Biden’s position on the board when his father served as vice president raised no red flags and “didn’t violate anything.”

However, Lutsenko is now being investigated for corruption and abuse of power. He was "fired as Ukraine's top legal official" in September 2019, USA Today reported.

In July, Trump asked Ukraine’s president to investigate Hunter Biden.

Earlier this year, the Biden campaign released a video purporting to explain “what really happened in Ukraine," saying that Shokin was the "embodiment of the corruption that has been hurting Ukraine’s government for a very long time."

"Joe Biden is the person who got him out of office," Biden’s rapid response director, Andrew Bates, claims in the video. "It was a monumental, international, bipartisan, anti-corruption victory."

Correction: Thursday, Nov. 6, 2020:

A previous version of this article stated that Biden attended Holy Rosary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school is located on Philadelphia Pike in Claymont, Delaware.