Former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter said that taking a seat on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company was “poor judgment,” but wasn’t unethical. He made the admission on ABC’s Good Morning America in a wide-ranging interview, his first on-camera appearance since news broke weeks ago that President Donald Trump urged Ukraine’s president to investigate his work for the company.
In the interview, ABC News’ Amy Robach asked Biden if he would have gotten the board position if he hadn’t been the son of the vice president.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said. “Probably not, in retrospect. But that’s—you know—I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”
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He said it was a mistake because it gave Republicans material to use to criticize his father.
“Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah,” he said. “But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”
Biden also said he had no extensive knowledge of Ukraine’s natural-gas industry, but that other members of the board also lacked expertise. He cited his work as vice chairman of Amtrak, chairman of the board of the UN food program, and his work as a lawyer for white-shoe law firm Boies Schiller as his qualifications.
“I don’t regret being on the board,” he continued, “but what I regret is not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the U.S. that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea which has again been completely debunked by everyone.”
Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, spent months traveling around Ukraine and Europe, trying to find dirt on Hunter Biden to boost Trump’s electoral prospects. In the process, he essentially conducted shadow foreign policy for Trump. And according to the White House memo of a call between Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump urged him to talk with Giuliani about his Burisma Holdings investigation. The revelations kicked off an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. And they disturbed many Republicans as well.
The Trump family, meanwhile, has stayed focused on Hunter Biden. In the process, he’s become a prominent national figure.
He said he would never go to rallies and criticize Trump’s children, alluding to Eric Trump recently leading “lock him up” chants about Biden. But later in the interview, he still took a shot at the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted numerous times about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and referred to the former vice president as “#QuidProJoe.”
“I’ve been through some sh-- stuff in my life,” Biden said. “I’ve been through some real, real stuff. This isn’t real stuff. It isn’t. It truly isn’t. That part of it, that Barnum and Bailey—you know, say anything, do anything you want, you know, I mean, like, you know, Donald Prince Humperdinck—Trump Jr. is not somebody that I really care about.”
