In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, Hunter Biden expressed second thoughts about his role on a Ukrainian gas company at the heart of President Trump’s attempts to smear his father. “Did I make a mistake? Maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah.” Biden said. “But did I make a mistake based on some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”
In what was his first public appearance since he was thrust into the spotlight by Rudy Giuliani’s extracurricular efforts to dig up dirt on political rival Joe Biden, the 49-year-old son of the presidential candidate said his work on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma was above board, but that he regretted the impact it had had on the race. “What I regret is not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the United States that would be listening to this—this ridiculous conspiracy idea,” Biden said. “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. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever.”
Biden touched on the charge he wasn’t qualified to be on the board of a gas company. “I was vice chairman of the board of Amtrak for five years,” he said. “I was the chairman of the board of the U.N. World Food Program. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world.” “I think that I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board—if not more,” Biden said.
“If your last name wasn’t Biden,” ABC News reporter Amy Robach asked, “do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?” “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” he said. “But that’s—you know—I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.” “Because my dad was Vice President of the United States, there’s literally nothing, as a young man or as a full grown adult that—my father in some way hasn’t had influence over,” Biden said.
