Hunter Biden has said his family name opened doors for him but it was also sometimes a burden. He was discussing his role on the board of Ukrainian holdings company Burisma.
President Joe Biden‘s son spoke to the BBC in an interview published on Tuesday. His memoir, Beautiful Things, is due to be released today and he’s made several appearances to promote it.
Hunter Biden worked for Burisma while his father was vice president and the manner in which he got the job became a focus of former President Donald Trump‘s campaign.
Biden told the BBC he took responsibility for “creating a story… that anyone conscious would know would be a tabloid sensation” but said that his life “is not a tabloid.”
He reiterated that he was qualified for the position at Burisma but said he had “missed… the perception that I would create.”
“I know that it is hard to believe with 20/20 hindsight how I could possibly have missed that,” Biden said.
Biden said that Burisma saw his family name as “gold” and that being a Biden had played a major part in his securing the job. The same accusation was levied by Trump and some Republicans over the course of 2019 and 2020, though Biden has maintained he did have the necessary qualifications for the role and accepting the job was not a mistake.
Biden said his surname had “opened doors that wouldn’t be opened up to other people” but that it had been “both a privilege and a burden.”
Former President Trump and his allies made serious allegations of wrongdoing against Biden related to his time at Burisma but no criminal accusations against Biden were ever proven.
Trump’s second impeachment centered on a phone call he had made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky where Democrats alleged Trump pressured Zelenksy into opening an inquiry into the Bidens, linking it to a pause in military aid.
Speaking about his struggle with drug and alcohol addiction, Biden said that his father had “saved” him from it and noted that the elder Biden had done so many times. His memoir focuses on “the love of a family and how it saved me.”
“I don’t belong to an administration, I belong to a family,” Biden said.
“I think what people see in the Biden family is their family. I think that they see all of the tragedy in loss, but they see all the love and sincerity. And I think that they see that we’re not much different than any other family out there,” he said.
Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA
