Biden’s son resigns from Chinese equity fund
Hunter Biden is to step down from board role after being embroiled in the Trump impeachment row
JOE BIDEN’S son Hunter has announced that he is stepping down from the board of a Chinese-backed private equity company, and will stop working for foreign-owned firms if his father is elected president in 2020.
Hunter Biden, 49, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that was being investigated by the authorities, has found himself dragged into the spotlight amid attempts to impeach Donald Trump. The impeachment inquiry was sparked after Mr Trump asked Ukraine’s president to look for evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
Yesterday, Hunter Biden announced he was leaving his role on the board of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, which was set up in 2013 to invest Chinese capital outside China.
George Mesires, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, said he would resign at the end of the month from the management company of the private equity fund backed by Chinese state-owned entities.
He also reiterated that his client never discussed his business activities with his father: “Hunter always understood his father would be guided, entirely and unequivocally, by established US policy, regardless of its effects on Hunter’s professional interests.
“He never anticipated the barrage of false charges against him and his father by the president of the United States.”
Mr Trump and Rudy Giuliani, his lawyer, have repeatedly claimed, without providing evidence, that Hunter Biden made millions from China while his father was vice-president.
They have also made unsubstantiated claims that Joe Biden used his position to help end an investigation in 2016 into the owner of Burisma, one of the country’s largest private gas companies, where Hunter Biden sat on the board. As vice-president, Mr Biden, alongside the IMF and several Western nations, pushed for the removal of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma. The Bidens deny any wrongdoing.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump raised eyebrows by publicly calling on China to investigate the Bidens.
A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said it wouldn’t interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
Scott Jennings, a former adviser to Senate leader Mitch Mcconnell, said he believed Hunter Biden’s decision to step down from the fund’s board was an admission that his role was improper: “If it’s all lies, and purely made up, why did he make the decision?”
Anthony Brown, the Democrat vicechair of the House armed services committee, said it was a move designed to smooth his father’s path to the White House: “It’s not a tacit acknowledgement of wrongdoing,” he said. “He doesn’t want to be a distraction to Joe Biden’s campaign.”
After Mr Trump won the presidency in 2016, he handed the running of the Trump Organisation to his sons, Don Jr and Eric, and said they wouldn’t do any new overseas deals. But they have continued to push the Trump Organisation’s existing foreign deals.