Biden deposition transcript released
WASHINGTON – For more than seven hours this week, Hunter Biden faced questions from lawmakers about his business dealings and drug abuse as House Republicans sought to tie President Joe Biden to the overseas ventures of his son.
Yet the long-awaited deposition gave GOP lawmakers no ammunition to bolster their unsubstantiated case that the president benefited financially from his son’s work.
The 229-page transcript of the closeddoor, combative deposi- tion was released late
Thursday. It shows that from the start of the hearing, Hunter Biden disputed Republicans’ central accusation.
“I did not involve my father in my business, not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions, domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist, never,” Biden said.
As a board member for the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, Biden denied ever connecting his clients with his father by phone to discuss business.
Pressed about a 2014 trip to Beijing − in which Biden introduced Jonathan Li, a Chinese business partner, to his father − he said it was not a meeting but instead a rope-line encounter at the hotel.
Biden confirmed that his father joined him for two dinners at Georgetown’s Café Milano in 2014 and 2015.
The dinners included Burisma business partner Devon Archer, other associates and international oligarchs.
But he downplayed both gatherings, saying he ate at Café Milano “dozens and dozens of times” and that his father would occasionally stop by to “have a bowl of spaghetti.”
“My father was never involved in any of my business, ever,” Biden repeated. “Never received a cent from anybody or never benefited in any way. Never took any actions on behalf in any way.”
A family brought close by tragedy
Biden argued that the relationships, dinners and meetings at the heart of House Republicans’ claims of impropriety simply reflected a close-knit family steeped in decades of politics and bound together by tragedy. “My dad has been a United States senator since I was 2 years old,” he told the committee. “My whole life has been this.”
The two Café Milano dinners were nothing more than a father wanting to be with his son, Biden said: “I can’t count the number of times my dad stopped to have dinner with me and my family.”
All those phone calls? Biden told the committee that he always picks up when his father calls. He said that mindset is a result of the family’s deep losses.
Heated exchange about addiction
Biden faced questions about his well-documented struggle with substance use. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida asked whether he was on drugs when he served on the Burisma board.
“Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye,” Biden responded. “You really think that’s appropriate to ask me?”
“Absolutely,” Gaetz replied.
Biden fired back with a veiled reference to reports of Gaetz’s own drug use: “Of all the people sitting around this table, do you think that’s appropriate to ask me?”
Biden went on to acknowledge – as he has previously said – that he is an addict but said he has been in recovery for more than 4 1/2 years. “Mr. Gaetz,” he said, “I work really, really hard at it.”
Later, Biden told the committee he did not remember sending a WhatsApp message to a Chinese business associate in July 2017 in which he said, “I’m sitting here with my father.” Republicans have tried to use the message to establish that Biden discussed his overseas business interests with his father.
Biden said he was drunk or high – “out of my mind,” as he put it – when he sent the message. His father was not sitting there and had no awareness of the business he was doing, he said.
“My addiction is not an excuse,” he said, “but I can tell you this: I am more embarrassed of this text message, if it actually did come from me, than any text message I’ve ever sent.”
The Kushner defense
Several times, Biden invoked the name of another presidential relative – Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner – to suggest that Republicans were applying a double standard.
Kushner, who served as one of Trump’s top advisers, started a private equity firm just months after leaving the White House and reportedly received a $2 billion investment from a fund controlled by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Unlike Jared Kushner, I’ve never received money from a foreign government,” Biden said.
When Gaetz asked how much foreign money Biden made while his father was vice president, he called the question “highly disingenuous” because the committee already had his bank records. He added, “I don’t think you have Jared Kushner’s tax returns, do you?”
Asked about a 2017 text message in which he suggested his father might stop by a luncheon in New York City with a Chinese executive, Biden noted that his father, who was not in office at the time, did not attend. Then he again turned the subject back to Kushner.
“When Jared Kushner flies over to Saudi Arabia, picks up $2 billion, comes back and puts it in his pocket, OK, and (Trump) is running for president of the United States, you guys have any problem with that?” Biden asked.