The long-awaited defense of Hunter Biden

[Gothmog]

Here are some facts including that the fact that Hunter was a biglaw firm that was advising this company https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/5/1907833/-The-long-awaited-defense-of-Hunter-Biden

Following Paradigm, Biden continued working as a lobbyist for several years and was appointed to the board of Amtrak by President George W. Bush. He had also been the vice chairman of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. He then founded a private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, in 2009, which later partnered with the Chinese government to form yet another equity firm, called BHR, where he held an unpaid board position. Trump likes to argue that Biden took “tons of money” from China, but again—this position was unpaid.
He ended his lobbying career and left the Amtrak board as his father became vice president, then started another consulting firm in 2008, as noted by Newsweek.

In 2008, Hunter Biden also founded Seneca Global Advisors, a consulting firm that helps companies expand into global markets. His earnings from Rosemont Seneca and Seneca Global Advisors are not publicly available.

Biden then joined the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, which features superstar lawyer David Boies as its primary partner and chairman. While at Boies Schiller, Biden was involved in advising Burisma, which was a client at the time being personally handled by Biden, who was advising them on corporate reform, according to Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires:

In April 2014, Hunter was asked to join the board of Burisma, the largest independent natural gas producer in Ukraine. At the time, Hunter was of counsel with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP [fn 1] (“Boies Schiller”), a major U.S. law firm, and was advising Burisma on its corporate reform initiatives, an important aspect of fueling Burisma’s international growth and diversity. Vibrant energy production, particularly natural gas, was central to Ukraine’s independence and to stemming the tide of Vladimir Putin’s attack on the principles of a democratic Europe.

To further its goals of independence, Burisma sought to adopt standards and practices traditionally employed by Western companies. At Hunter’s urging, Boies Schiller engaged Nardello & Co., a leading global investigative firm, to assess, among other things, Burisma’s corporate structure and governance practices. Burisma agreed to pay the legal expenses of Boies Schiller to support Hunter in developing corporate reform initiatives.

Because of Burisma’s stated commitment to corporate best practices, it was able to attract well-qualified board members, including the former president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, a leading advocate of democratic principles in the region. President Kwasniewski, familiar with Hunter’s work on behalf of Burisma, recommended that Hunter join the board.

Again, this view is consistent that Biden ultimately joined by the board for Burisma Holdings to help it with its efforts regarding “corporate governance,” as noted by Wikipedia.

In the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Mykola Zlochevsky faced a money laundering investigation,[33][34] and his company Burisma Holdings, the largest natural gas producer in Ukraine,[14] assembled a "high-profile international board" in response.[35][34] Biden, then an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner, was hired to help Burisma with corporate governance best practices, and a consulting firm in which Biden is a partner was also retained by Burisma.[36][37][38] Chris Heinz, John Kerry's stepson, opposed his partners Devon Archer and Hunter Biden joining the board in 2014 due to the reputational risk.[34] Among those who joined the board of directors in April 2014 were Biden, Archer and former Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski.[39] Biden served on the board of Burisma until his term expired in April 2019,[40] receiving compensation of up to $50,000 per month in some months.[37][41]

So it appears that Biden was placed on the board of Burisma as part of its effort to “clean up” its practices after the allegations of money laundering by Zlochevsky, which had previously occurred in 2012. Biden took a pay cut to be on the board compared to what he’d earned as an investment banker, although it may have been an upgrade compared to what he likely earned at Boies Schiller. Biden had nothing to do with the investigation of Zlochevsky and was never investigated himself.

Being on the board of AMTRACK and being with the biglaw firm that was advising this company are sufficient qualifications for Hunter to be appointed on the board.

[mountain grammy]

1. Then there's thr trump boys.

Dumb and dumber.. let’s see their resumes.

Unbelievable the depths republicans have gone to. Sucking the light out of America.

[nolabear]

2. Incredible. The GOP paints him as a drugged out ne'er do well.

So many things need to be flogged ad nauseum.

[Kali]

3. thanks for this

[Gothmog]

7. Hi

How are you doing?

[Kali]

16. probably about the same as everybody

nervous, disgusted, angry, barely hopeful - you know, life under the orange asshole.

[Hekate]

4. Kick!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

5. Wow.. John Kerry's step son ?

[Gothmog]

8. The Heinz family has a ton of money

Hunter was in great company

[Laura PourMeADrink]

14. No wonder Kerry didn't want to comment on Impeachment

the other night.

[rickyhall]

6. Seems he's the exact opposite of President* Dickhead.

[madeup64]

9. The title of the dkos thread brings up an important question

I read liberal/progressive blogs way to much probably. I do not really post much but this really makes me wonder why the hell this seems to be the first significant blog post that I've come across laying out a strong factual basis that his appointment to Burisma's board wasn't how it's been endlessly portrayed. I feel foolish that I bought into the narrative that there was very little merit if any to his appointment. Now perhaps it has been and I missed it but one would think that it would be a continuous refrain by the left leaning blogosphere leading these facts to at least permeate into the MSM. I'm not on the Biden primary bandwagon but he is the clear frontrunner right now and it is a bit disheartening right now that Democratic messaging has not been hammering this more. "Why do the Republicans hate that Hunter Biden worked his tail off and it led to better opportunities in his life?" Messaging like that or close to should be a no-brainer. Democrats give to much credit to the vast majority of voters and seem to not understand how Republican messaging is so critical to influencing many of those very uniformed non-partisan voters.

[Gothmog]

15. I knew about AMTRAK and the Boies firm earlier

This was on a couple of legal blogs that I follow. Basically, one blog pointed out that Hunter was qualified to be in this board because he was former big law. Big law attorneys saw no reason why Hunter was not qualified to be on a board.

This article just put these materials together.

[madeup64]

17. Thanks for the response Gothmog

Considering this was information that was out in the public realm it is baffling that it wasn't repeated ad nauseam as another poster succinctly put it. In reality this situation should easily be re-cast as a positive for Biden. "A child he raises, even after dealing with Joe's earlier life tragedies, grows up to be an immensley successful attorney whose work led to the upper echelons of corporate America." You know as oppossed to Trump's children that were court ordered to take classes on how to run a charity and have only been successful by riding the coattails of their father's only real business acumen. Which is successfully bullshitting America to believe the Trump name to be synonymous with business success.

[progressoid]

10. Will this fit on a nice three line meme?

Because virtually no one is going to read this.

If Joe is going to be our nominee, he'd better have a killer strategy to fight this. I hope he's not relying on things like posts on Kos. This will be his version of the swiftboat or Benghazi.

[spanone]

11. K&R...⭐️⭐️⭐️

[delisen]

12. This is not at all reassuring.

Just reminds me of Neil Bush's Silverado role, and Richard Nixon's brother, or the Justice Kennedy's son Deutsche Bank role with Kennedy's sudden retirement.

I consider Scalia and Clarence Thomas tainted by ethical lapses.

Of course the Trump family members is beyond the pale.

All office holders have the responsibility to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.this becomes especially important in foreign relations.

Disclosure helps enormously-politicians are often forthcoming about relatives working in the public interest or serving in the military--but often do not address these other types of roles.

Looks as though Chris Heinz had a good grounding in ethics.

[PatSeg]

13. Thanks for posting

[Gothmog]

18. GOP forcing Hunter Biden to testify could 'completely backfire' on them -- here's why

Link to tweet

But as CNN’s Michael Smerconish noted on Saturday, this strategy might not even work.
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“This is my theory, pure speculation,” said Smerconish. “I have this vision on the Democratic side of the aisle, some who know Hunter Biden, are sort of rubbing their hands and saying, yeah, yeah, just keep begging for this guy.”

“The Republicans have created such a caricature of him. In other words, they set the bar so low,” continued Smerconish. “And then all of a sudden, Hunter Biden comes in. He’s a handsome guy. He’s articulate. He’s smart. He went to Georgetown, he went to Yale Law. He puts sentences together that are not indicative of having committed anything illicit, other than earning money, perhaps because of the name with which he was bestowed. And Americans say, ‘Oh my god, is that all there is?’ It could completely backfire. It’s one of the intangibles. I don’t know, but I’m paying attention.”

[Budi]

19. K & R

Link to tweet