The battle between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden has seen its first casualty: Hunter Biden has announced, through his lawyer, that he will step down from the board of the Shanghai, China-based BHR Equity Investment Fund Management Company, and promises not to engage in foreign work if his father is elected president in 2020.
“Hunter always understood that his father would be guided, entirely and unequivocally, by established U.S. policy, regardless of its effects on Hunter’s professional interests,” his lawyer, George Mesires, said in a statement, according to Bloomberg. “He never anticipated the barrage of false charges against both him and his father by the President of the United States.”
“Under a Biden Administration, Hunter will readily comply with any and all guidelines or standards a President Biden may issue to address purported conflicts of interest, or the appearance of such conflicts, including any restrictions related to overseas business interests,” the statement continued. “He will continue to keep his father personally uninvolved in his business affairs.”
Hunter Biden said in the statement that he’ll resign from a private equity fund that’s backed by Chinese state-owned entities at the end of the month, according to Bloomberg. He currently serves on the board of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, an organization created in 2013 with the intention of investing Chinese capital outside the country.
While the statement included the usual denials of anything improper, the act of stepping down is a stunning acknowledgment of the liability the publicity has had on Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Seeing as Joe Biden is currently not in government, it’s curious why the announcement was not that Hunter would resign from the board if Joe Biden wins the presidency. Clearly, the Biden campaign knows that Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings are a huge problem for them going forward and hopes this will stop the bleeding, and help Biden re-secure his frontrunner status.
Biden will still have to answer questions over the conflicts of interest. If Hunter Biden is now vowing not to engage in foreign work if his father is elected president, that doesn’t erase the foreign work and selling of influence that occurred while he was vice president. Unfortunately for Joe, he made his bed long ago, and now has to lie in it.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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