Hunter Biden said he is ‘full cooperating’ with a federal investigation into his finances and claimed he’s never given his father ‘a nickel’ from his overseas business ventures.
President Joe Biden’s son is being investigated by the Justice Department for his taxes, which is related to his work in the Ukraine and China. The federal probe began in 2018 and was revealed after the 2020 presidential election.
‘They’re investigating. I can’t really talk about it, other than to say is that I’m fully cooperating, and I’m fully confident that at the end of the day it’s all gonna be fine,’ Hunter Biden told CBS’ ‘This Morning’ in an interview that aired Monday.
He said his legal team is not working on a plea deal.
‘I am absolutely certain that what we’re doing is is being completely cooperative with whoever is asking, from any authority whatsoever,’ he told CBS’ Anthony Mason as part of his publicity tour for his forthcoming memoir ‘Beautiful Things.’
He also said he’s never given Joe Biden ‘a nickel’ from his business dealings in the Ukraine and China.
‘Nothing ever,’ Hunter Biden said. ‘Not a nickel.’
He added that neither ‘directly or indirectly, not a nickel ever. 100% No, never.’
Hunter Biden told CBS News he is ‘full cooperating’ with a federal investigation into his finances and is ‘fully confident that at the end of the day it’s all gonna be fine’
Hunter Biden said he never gave Joe Biden any money from those dealings: ‘Nothing ever … not a nickel,’ he said; Hunter and Joe Biden are seen above on election night in 2020
Hunter Biden business dealings became a political liability for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign when President Donald Trump used them to claim the Bidens were corrupt and that Joe Biden financially benefited from his son’s international work.
Joe Biden has not been charged with any wrong doing and is not being investigated as part of the federal probe into Hunter.
Hunter Biden was on the board Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, while his father was vice president. During that time Joe Biden urged the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor, which Trump and his allies have charged was done to benefit Burisma. But Biden was following United States policy and other European nations also advocated to fire the prosecutor. The concern was the prosecutor was not doing enough to fight corruption in the company. Hunter Biden quit the board during the 2020 campaign as Trump railed against his work.
He told CBS News he would make the same decision and would not sit on the board if given another chance.
He said he didn’t realize the extent to which the Trump campaign would use his work against his father.
‘I didn’t fully comprehend the level to which this former administration and the people around him would go,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hand a weapon to people that would use it in an illegitimate way that they used the weapon of me against my dad.’
Hunter also sat on the board of BHR, a Chinese equity firm, that was trying to raise a $1.5 billion financial stake – a number Trump latched on to to accuse Hunter Biden of personal financial gain. Hunter says he didn’t make money from the venture. Hunter Biden accompanied his father, who was then vice president, and his daughter Finnegan on a 2013 trip to China but said the two men never discussed his work with BHR.
In his interviews with CBS News as part of his publicity tour, Hunter discussed his overseas work, his struggle with addiction and his relationship with his brother’s widow.
He said that he convinced his father Joe Biden to issue a public statement supporting his affair with his deceased brother Beau’s widow Hallie, arguing the relationship would ‘seem wrong’ if his father didn’t bless it.
”Dad,’ I told him, ‘if people find out, but they think you’re not approving of this, it makes it seem wrong,’ Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir, Beautiful Things, set to be released on April 6, according to an advance copy obtained by Fox News.
In early 2017, just months after his father left office as vice president, the pressure was on Hunter when a reporter called to ask him about his affair with Hallie, which began while he was still married to his first wife.
Hunter argued to his father that it would be devastating to his children if Biden didn’t bless the unusual relationship, telling him: ”The kids have to know there’s nothing wrong with this, and the one person who can tell them that is you.’
Hunter Biden has said that he convinced his father Joe Biden to issue a public statement supporting his affair with his deceased brother Beau’s widow Hallie
Hallie is pictured front standing next to Hunter Biden (left in blue suit and sunglasses) and Joe Biden (right in black) at Beau Biden’s funeral on June 6, 2015
Biden was reluctant but eventually issued a statement saying: ‘We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them.’
Hunter recounts that his relationship with Hallie was born out of mutual grief, and unfolded as he was ‘backsliding’ into substance abuse after getting out of rehab.
‘I was madly trying to hold on to a slice of my brother, and I think Hallie was doing the same,’ Hunter wrote.
Hunter recounts that his relationship with Hallie was born out of mutual grief
‘If we weren’t all in, we worried, the relationship would be perceived as a salacious fling. So we tried to make something work that, in hindsight, was never in the cards,’ he continued.
Hunter’s relationship with Hallie blew up by 2019, around the same time as a series of his foreign business ventures evaporated. He went on to marry South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen, with whom he has a son.
On Sunday, Hunter spoke in an interview about his drug addiction, his relationship with sister-in-law Hallie Biden, the ongoing FBI investigation into his finances and his decision to join the board of Burisma.
‘I spent more times on my hands and knees picking through rugs smoking anything that even remotely resembled crack cocaine. I probably smoked more parmesan cheese than anyone that you know,’ the president’s son told CBS Sunday Morning with a laugh, as he told Tracy Smith about his battles with addiction.
The younger Biden said his father staged an intervention for him during his time as vice president. ‘He sort of ditched the Secret Service,’ Hunter Biden recalled, with the now-president telling his son that, ‘You’re not fine.’
In a teaser released Friday for another portion of the interview, Hunter Biden spoke about a second intervention, in which the then-2020 presidential candidate chased his son down the driveway, sobbing, begging him to stop using drugs.
Photos of Hunter smoking a crack pipe (left) and appearing inebriated (right) that were found on a laptop that made headlines just weeks before the November 3 presidential election
On ‘CBS Sunday Morning,’ Smith asked about the FBI’s current probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes, which came to light in December during the transition. Hunter Biden released a statement through the Biden-Harris transition office at the time.
He told CBS that he couldn’t discuss much about the case.
‘I can say this. I’m cooperating completely and I’m absolutely certain, 100 per cent certain, that at the end of the investigation that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing,’ the president’s son said.
Reporting on that investigation suggests that it deals with Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Chinese firms.
As for his business in Ukraine, Hunter Biden said he didn’t believe taking a spot on Ukrainian energy company Burisma’s board was a mistake.
‘No, I don’t think I made a mistake taking a spot on that board,’ he said. ‘I think I made a mistake in terms of underestimating the – the way in which it would be used against me.’
Smith pushed back, suggesting it was hard to believe that Hunter Biden didn’t realize that optics could look bad.
Hunter Biden, pictured with his wife Melissa Cohen and their son Beau Biden Jr. on March 26 as they boarded Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland
Hunter’s daughters Maisy, 20, Finnegan, 21, and Naomi, 27, (far left, center left and center right) are pictured with their cousin Natalie (far right) who is Beau Biden’s daughter
‘I’m being as honest with you as I possibly can,’ Hunter Biden replied. ‘All I know, is that not one investigative body, not one serious journalist have ever accused – has ever come to the conclusion that I did anything wrong, or that my father did anything wrong.’
Former President Donald Trump made Burisma a household name, floating to rally crowds that Hunter Biden was getting rich off his name – and that Joe Biden intervened and got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for wanting to investigate Burisma to protect his son.
Hunter’s new memoir, Beautiful Things, is out April 6
As he does in his forthcoming memoir, ‘Beautiful Things,’ he explained what compelled him to start dating Hallie, the widow of Beau Biden.
‘I think people were confused by that. And I understand that,’ he said. ‘It came out of a real overwhelming grief that we both shared. And we were together and trying to do the right thing and that grief turned into a hope for a love that maybe could replace what we lost.’
‘And it didn’t work. It didn’t work,’ he said.
He added, ‘I made a lot of decisions that I probably shouldn’t have made.’
Smith said that Hunter Biden told her that he had been sober since marrying his second wife, Melissa Cohen.
Hunter Biden said that he talked to his father every night – and that the president called all the grandkids daily too.
‘By the way, he’s always done that,’ Hunter Biden said. ‘Because he lost – because he, like me, knows what it’s like not to be able to pick up the phone and talk to your son,’ Hunter Biden said, choking up.
Smith pointed out that, ‘He almost lost you.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Yeah,’ Hunter Biden agreed. ‘It’s hard.’
‘I’m a Biden, we cry too much,’ he added.
