Hunter Biden’s ‘Expertise’ The election is over but Washington’s press corps is still largely incurious about the Biden family business. James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-expertise-11618263824?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
Remember that time in 2019 when Hunter Biden’s longtime partner in a venture funded by the Chinese government told the South China Morning Post that he was still working on an explanation of Mr. Biden’s role at the firm? A new narrative may soon be at hand. In a recent interview with comedian Jimmy Kimmel, the president’s 51-year-old son offered an intriguing claim about his business career. And it could be very useful to the corporate communications staff at China-based BHR, as well as the good folks at Ukraine’s Burisma and other overseas outfits that have paid him implausibly large sums.
Mr. Biden is still not claiming to be an expert in Chinese finance or Ukrainian energy or Romanian corruption statutes or Russian real estate. But in defending his lucrative arrangement with Burisma during an appearance on the Kimmel show, Mr. Biden said that he had “expertise in corporate governance.” And what would foreign oligarchs do without corporate governance experts?
If true, this new Biden claim suggests at least the possibility that all of the millions of dollars he’s collected overseas really were legitimate. Maybe the foreign tycoons were not simply renting a Biden for purposes of Washington influence.
This sure seems like news, and tailor-made for media folk who still enjoy offering rebuttals against Donald Trump even though he has left public office and is not even allowed to speak on social media.
Yet for whatever reason, even though Hunter Biden is on a book tour, the press seems largely uninterested in his story. New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi writes today that his autobiography has “landed quietly in Washington.” She adds:
“I’m shocked,” a senior White House official said. “I get stuff on the dogs all the time. I’ve been so surprised I didn’t get anything on Hunter.” Whether they had braced for a media frenzy or not, members of the Joe Biden administration report that, internally, the arrival of Hunter’s book (which was ghostwritten by the journalist Drew Jubera) on April 6 was a big nonevent.
Perhaps the press pack is wary of the new story from Hunter Biden given the rest of his explanation to Mr. Kimmel. The president’s son said that he’d served on numerous boards but the only two he mentioned were Amtrak and the World Food Program USA.
This column’s most celebrated alumnus might count the Biden explanation among the “worst appeals to authority” in contemporary debate. In an attempt to counter the assumption that the energy firm’s decision to hire him was all about politics, Mr. Biden is flagging his service at two highly politicized organizations based in Washington, D.C.
Amtrak has been losing money for decades and survives on government subsidies. While many people suspect that Burisma hired Hunter Biden for political considerations, we know that’s why Amtrak hired him. Back in 2006, Hunter’s father was a U.S. senator. “A spokeswoman for Joe Biden said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid suggested Hunter Biden’s name to the White House,” according to a report by Jennifer Brooks in Delaware’s News Journal newspaper.
“The Amtrak board is not one of Washington’s more glamorous postings,” Ms. Brooks charitably added. To be fair, the unpaid board was not exactly populated with corporate all-stars. According to Ms. Brooks:
Biden would take the seat last held by former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, whose term expired in 2002. It is one of three long-vacant seats on the eight-member board.
An organization with such strong governance practices that board seats remained vacant for years? “This is a huge opportunity for him,” Mr. Dukakis oddly proclaimed at the time Hunter Biden was welcomed aboard.
As for the World Food Program USA, an unpaid board of the politically connected oversees this nonprofit affiliate of the United Nations. By all accounts the U.N.’s food program is more useful than many other U.N. programs, but like Amtrak it relies heavily on the generosity of U.S. taxpayers and like Amtrak, it is not the first place headhunters look for experts on corporate governance.
Yet foreign tycoons saw something special in Hunter Biden. What could it have been?
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