It has been abundantly clear for months that the House Republican case suggesting that President Biden was corruptly involved in his son Hunter’s business engagements was a function of frenzied cherry-picking. When Hunter Biden came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to answer questions from legislators and investigators working on the impeachment inquiry targeting his father, he was presented with a number of those assertions.
In each case, he offered credible responses. You can read them below, in his own words.
What emerges when reading the transcript of the interview is how dependent the Republican effort is on three tactics. You’ll see those play out in the rebuttals Hunter Biden offered, but it’s useful to articulate them specifically.
First and most obvious is that cherry-picking. Republicans have gained access to countless financial and personal documents involving the Bidens and business associates of Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s brother. Sifting through that material like amateur internet sleuths, they’ve picked out a dozen or so things that might be framed as suspicious. This is how all investigations work, of course, with a few clues scattered among a lot of distractions. But when the allegations include such things as Joe Biden showing up at a dinner involving his son and a business partner, the frequency of his joining his son for dinner matters.
This is the second point: Republicans are trying to weaponize the schmoozing that politicians do. The allegations of Joe Biden meeting Hunter Biden’s partners centers on things like shaking hands at a reception or Hunter Biden’s associates being invited to White House events.
Third, the allegations center on two key conflations. The first and better known is using “the Biden family” as a proxy for “Hunter and James Biden.” Claiming that Hunter Biden’s income was going to “the Biden family” is a way to loop in the president unfairly. The same thing happens with “payments.” At times, the money involved in Hunter Biden’s transactions are for investments, not for his own benefit.
Those tactics in mind, here are the allegations that Republicans have made (in bold and with examples) and distillations of Hunter Biden’s rebuttals, including direct quotes from the transcript.
Hunter Biden flew with his father on Air Force Two to have him help close a deal in China. Biden had coffee with that partner, Jonathan Li. (example)
Hunter Biden said he traveled with his father many times. Reading an excerpt from his book, he said he did so to allow his daughter to spend time with her grandfather. In China, he met a friend with whom he’d later go into business. The friend shook hands with Joe Biden in a reception line.
The claim about coffee came from Devon Archer, who wasn’t there; Hunter Biden and Li went for coffee after the reception line.
Joe Biden wrote a letter of recommendation for Li’s son. (example)
He did.
Hunter Biden repeatedly put his father on speakerphone during business meetings. (example)
Because of the tragedies in the Biden family, both Hunter and Joe Biden would take calls from family members whenever they were received. Sometimes, that was during meetings. Joe Biden did not contribute to any discussion about business partnerships.
Hunter Biden introduced his father to business partners during dinner meetings in Washington. (example)
The restaurant where these two meetings were held is called Cafe Milano and sits roughly between the White House and the vice-presidential residence. His father would at times join him if he was eating dinner there. The meetings in question were centered on- Hunter Biden’s work for the World Food Program and a birthday celebration.
One of the people at one of those dinners, Yelena Baturina, later paid Hunter Biden millions of dollars. Another attendee bought him a car. (example)
Baturina did attend a dinner, but did not give Hunter Biden any money. That investment was with Archer and went to the purchase of buildings in New York, as Archer testified.
The car, Hunter Biden said, was bought by Archer, who was working with a Kazakh businessman named Kenes Rakishev.
A $40,000 check to Joe Biden was money that had come from a deal involving a Chinese company. (example)
Hunter Biden and his uncle were partners in a venture that saw Hunter pay James Biden for his work. James Biden later paid back a loan that Joe Biden had extended him. (The Washington Post has seen documentation of the original loan.)
Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma came despite his lack of experience. (example)
The value to Burisma came from Hunter Biden’s experience as a lawyer working on corporate governance issues. He’d been encouraged to join the board by the president of Poland, who viewed Burisma as an important bulwark against Russia in the wake of the seizing of Crimea in 2014.
Hunter Biden called his father to get him to relieve investigatory pressure on Burisma. (example)
Every part of this is disputed. Hunter Biden says he didn’t call his father; Archer suggested he did before admitting he wasn’t privy to such a call. There was no known investigation into Burisma that needed to be addressed; in fact, Burisma viewed Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor general, as an asset. Joe Biden and others in the international community were already calling for the ouster of Shokin. Joe Biden was already planning to travel to Ukraine at the time of the purported call.
In his response, Hunter Biden invoked the name of Alexander Smirnov, charged last month by the Justice Department with having invented a story about the Bidens being bribed.
An email suggesting that money be held for the “big guy” indicates that Joe Biden had a financial stake in a deal. (example)
The email was written by a third party who was speculating that maybe Joe Biden could get involved. Hunter Biden said that he didn’t remember seeing the email but that he would have rejected the idea out of hand if he had. The consummated deal did not include Joe Biden.
This was bolstered by text exchanges between that man and Tony Bobulinski, who was very briefly an associate of Hunter Biden’s. One message suggested they “get the company set up” and then “tell H and family the high stakes and get Joe involved.”
A message from Hunter Biden referring to “my chairman” was a reference to his father. (example)
Hunter Biden and his business partners were each working with one of two Chinese business executives, each of whom was referred to as chairman. This is a reference to the chairman with whom Hunter was working.
In one message, Hunter Biden tried to pressure a business partner by noting that his father was sitting next to him. (example)
Biden testified that, if legitimate, the message was apparently sent when he was intoxicated, since he sent it to the wrong person. He insisted that his father was not with him when it was sent.
Hunter Biden sought out a shared space for him and his father to do business. (example)
Biden says that this occurred during the worst period of his addiction and that he hoped to demonstrate that the family could go back to normal. There ultimately was no shared space.
There were other issues presented to Hunter Biden, but those didn’t centrally allege wrongdoing by his father. This was the intent of the hearing after all — and as Biden and his attorney had to remind Republicans at times — not to tear down Hunter Biden but to show how Joe Biden allegedly benefited from these business deals.
Now more than ever, there’s no evidence he did.
