Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent testified on Tuesday that he raised Hunter Biden’s employment with a Ukrainian gas company as a potential conflict of interest in early 2015, but was rebuffed by Joe Biden’s office, the Washington Post reported.
Kent’s conversation about the Bidens and Ukraine took place only months before Joe Biden withheld one billion dollars in aid from Ukraine to pressure officials there to fire a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma Holdings. Burisma is the natural gas firm that was paying Hunter Biden a reported $50,000 a month, despite his complete lack of expertise in the energy sector or in Ukraine.
According to anonymous sources privy to Kent’s testimony, Kent said that he was told Joe Biden was unable to address concerns about Hunter’s dealings at the time because the then-vice president was dealing with his other son Beau’s cancer battle.
A Biden staffer reportedly told Kent that they simply didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with questions about Hunter’s Ukraine situation at the time. A former aide to Biden contradicted this, however, by saying that Beau Biden’s cancer battle, while heartwrenching for the then-vice president, had a “minimal impact on his work.”
Opening Pandora’s box
The Post pointed out that the so-called impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky presents a real risk that even more questions will be raised about Joe Biden, who was until recently the frontrunner in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary race.
Biden and his allies are doing their best to portray his involvement with Ukraine as having been completely above board. But it seems like more than a convenient coincidence that Biden admittedly successfully pushed for the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was probing Burisma.
Testimony such as Kent’s adds fuel to the growing speculation about the Bidens, while also giving legitimacy to Trump’s request to Zelensky asking that the scenario be given a closer look.
Hunter admits mistakes
Hunter Biden recently admitted in an interview that it was probably a bad idea to take the job with Burisma because of the perceived conflict of interest with his father’s position at the time.
“In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part,” he said to Amy Robach in an ABC News interview aired Tuesday.
“I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father. That’s where I made the mistake. So I take full responsibility for that,” he added.
Hunter Biden said he never did anything improper while on the Burisma board. He also admitted that he probably would not have gotten any of the high-paying positions he has held in the past if not for the fact that he was the vice president’s son.
Looking at all the information that has emerged thus far, it seems that there may well be more to investigate about Quid Pro Joe, and the Democrats’ laser-focus on Trump’s phone call with President Zelensky as a pretext for impeachment is keeping the spotlight right on the Bidens.
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