Hunter Biden Defends Ukraine Work On ‘GMA,’ Calls Donald Trump’s Attacks “Ridiculous” Conspiracy Theories

Ted Johnson

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Joe Biden’s son Hunter, in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, denied doing anything improper when he joined the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president, but regretted that his work has become the source of President Donald Trump’s “ridiculous conspiracy” claims.

Hunter Biden’s sitdown with Amy Robach was his first interview since House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump. Their inquiry centers on Trump’s July 17 phone call in which he asked the president of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

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“I’m a human. Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah. But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not,” Hunter Biden said in the interview, portions of which also will air on World News Tonight on Tuesday evening.

He said that “it was poor judgment on my part” to “be in the middle of something that is … a swamp in many ways.”

“I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do harm to my father. That’s where I made the mistake,” Biden said. “So I take full responsibility for that. Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way.”

Biden said that his “regret” was “not taking into account that there would be a Rudy Giuliani and a president of the United States that would be listening to this ridiculous conspiracy idea, which again has been completely debunked by everyone.”

Their claim centers on the idea that Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor in order to protect his son as the gas company, Burisma, was under investigation. In fact, Biden and a number of world leaders were calling on the prosecutor to be ousted for failing to curb corruption in the country.

“It feels like we are living in some kind of Alice in Wonderland where you are up on the real world and you fall down the rabbit hole, and the president is the Cheshire cat asking you questions about crazy things that don’t have any resemblance to the reality of anything that has to do with me,” Hunter Biden said.

He defended his qualifications to serve on the Burisma board, even though he had no experience working for a gas company. He said that he had been vice chairman of the board of Amtrak and was chairman of the board for the World Food Program as well as an attorney for the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.

He said he didn’t have knowledge about natural gas, but “had as much knowledge as anyone else who was on the board.” He added that he left the board in April because his term ended.

Asked if he would have been invited to join the board had he not been the vice president’s son, Hunter Biden said, “I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t think there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”

Biden reportedly was paid $50,000 per month for his work on the board.

He insisted that he never discussed his work for the Ukrainian company other than a time when his father said to him, “I hope you know what you are doing.”

“I said I do, and that was the end of the discussion,” Biden said.

He also recently resigned from the board of a Chinese investment company because his work had become a “distraction” as his father runs for president. He’s committed to not serving on the board of any foreign company if his father becomes president.

He also denied Trump’s claim that he made $1.5 billion from his China work. In fact, he said that he hasn’t made any money from serving on that board.

“Nobody ever paid me $1.5 billion, and if they had, I would not be doing this interview,” he said.

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