WASHINGTON — Former first son Hunter Biden is blaming the “really distasteful” “hypocrites” who worked for then-President Barack Obama for setting in motion his most controversial foreign business dealings during his father Joe Biden’s eight-year vice presidency.
Hunter, now 55, blamed Obama’s staff for forcing him to start back at “square one” because they were concerned about conflicts of interest in his domestic lobbying work, using a new 5 ½-hour podcast with “The Shawn Ryan Show” to blast former associates and powerful Democrats.
“Obama picked him to be vice president. And in so doing, he had a group of people that I find to be really distasteful and hypocrites, but they said that I needed to give up my [domestic lobbying work],” he said.
“I was working for these universities, but I was assisting them both in the legal and the policy perspective and lobbying to help them get money… I was a lobbyist and so I voluntarily, but with a lot of pressure from them, none from my dad, had to give up that business.”
Hunter said in his woe-be-me account that he had been earning money from “like 14, 15 Jesuit universities. And that was my entire practice and I was really proud of it.”
“And so I basically started back in square one,” he said.
“And I started a consulting firm because I also stepped down from the board of Amtrak because they said that that was a conflict of interest and they were concerned that it was a conflict of interest,” the disgraced former first son said.
“I had to rebuild and I didn’t have any savings — had three girls, all in private school at the time, and, you know, don’t have any money.”
Hunter said that he initially worked with new domestic clients, including a “large Midwestern infrastructure firm” after his dad became vice president in 2009, before joining in 2014 the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which famously paid him $1 million per year despite no industry experience.
“I was very, very naive about what a viper’s den Ukraine is. What an absolute, like, talk about a, like, a level of corruption that [is] still staggering,” said Hunter, whose dad led the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio when he was raking in millions there.
“It was absolutely a mistake,” he said of the Burisma job, “not because of anything that I did that I am embarrassed about or in anyway whatsoever feel conflicted about as it relates to what I did for Burisma. But because of the political position that it put us all in.”
He brushed past his dealing with two Chinese government-linked entities, which paid him additional millions — including after he wrote in a 2017 text message that he was sitting with his dad and expecting payment — and laughed off concern about his art career later during his dad’s presidency.
“I was on the cover of the New York Post more times in one year than anybody in the history of the paper going back to like 1780. And none of it was good,” he complained — misstating The Post’s 1801 establishment by founding father Alexander Hamilton.
Hunter repeated his claim that an infamous 2017 email penciling in a 10% cut for his father — the “big guy” — as part of a Chinese energy venture was written by a business partner without any reflection of reality.
“What f—ing foreign business are you talking about? I had a partner who was Chinese, who was part of a private equity company, and we were gonna invest in natural gas in the United States in an industry that I knew of. And it fell apart and it didn’t happen,” Hunter blustered.
“And I worked for, on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, and as a lawyer, I represented a guy that was from Romania for a three month period of time. There’s my foreign business. I never had any business with any foreign government ever, ever.”
He blasted his former “best friend in business” Devon Archer, whom President Trump pardoned in March for defrauding an American Indian tribe, for gaining his clemency after he “literally stuck his lips around the ass of [first sons] Don Jr. and Eric [Trump].”
Hunter Biden said he’s roughly $15 million in debt with no plan to pay it off after federal prosecutions and congressional investigations throughout his dad’s four-year term of office.
He didn’t mention specific debtors, presumably including Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris, who spent at least $6.5 million to bankroll Hunter’s defense and Los Angeles lifestyle, including covering his $17,500 monthly rent.
The former first son didn’t spare his dad’s administration from criticism, blasting his disastrous 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and illegal immigration, which surged on his father’s watch.
“One of the failures was the way in which they executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think it was an obvious f–king failure. I think 13 Marines are dead. I think that there was a better way to do it,” he said.
“I can blame it on his generals. I can blame it on… the way in which we did it. But my dad always knew this also is that the buck stops with him.”
On illegal immigration, Hunter Biden surprisingly sounded like Trump, saying: “We need immigration, we need a vibrant immigration, but we don’t want immigrants that are coming here illegally draining us of resources and being prioritized above people that are actual literal heroes that are coming home or that are still recovering from 21, 20 years of endless war or anybody else in our society.”
One Democratic source jokingly referred to the book-length interview as “the podcast from Hell” — a reference to Hunter’s infamous laptop containing embarrassing photos and documents linking his dad to foreign patrons across the globe.
A former Biden aide, who admitted they hadn’t listened to the sprawling soliloquy, said Hunter is entitled to his own views, and that his sniping at Obama’s aides was understandable because “they hated his dad from the beginning and were actively mean and dismissive.”
Hunter also sought to turn the tables on the Trump administration on tape, arguing he had more experience to justify his foreign work than businessman Steve Witkoff has to serve as Trump’s special envoy to the Mideast and Russia.
“Witkoff… has zero experience. Everybody says that I don’t have experience. I was a f–king adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign F–king Service,” he exclaimed.
He insisted that his tax fraud, for which his dad last pardoned him after he pleaded guilty, stemmed from his addiction to crack cocaine and the fact that his accountant died, and argued that his illegal gun-possession conviction, for which he also was pardoned, won’t be a constitutionally valid rap for long due to a pending court case.
Hunter Biden served no prison time for either set of crimes after his father’s pardon last December — despite similarly situated offenders often being put behind bars.
Hunter says he’s concerned about influence-peddling
Hunter Biden spent much of the interview portraying Trump and his family as far worse than him when it comes to alleged corruption, saying he would be surprised if the current president leaves the White House and “the copper pipes are still in the walls” and saying “they are profiting off the presidency directly profiting and directly.”
The former first son’s remarks come after first lady Melania Trump recently threatened to sue him for falsely claiming she was introduced to the president by the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and his commentary could invite further legal threats.
“Don Jr opened up a club in Georgetown called the Executive Club, and he’s charging people… a $500,000 initiation fee to join the club with the stated purpose of the club being, it is the place where you can come and rub shoulders with the decision makers in his father’s administration,” Hunter said.
“They’re building towers in Saudi Arabia. They’re building towers in the UAE… They’re doing spas and golf courses and residential properties in Qatar… they’re building on government property that they bought through Jared Kushner’s f–king private equity fund, a government-owned island in Albania [and] one of the last public spaces in, in Serbia, a deal directly with the government.”
“And that’s just the tip of the f—-ing iceberg,” Hunter went on.
“Well, don’t forget about Gaza… They’re gonna redevelop Gaza. And where are they gonna get the money to do it? They’re gonna get the money from the Saudi royal family. They’re gonna get it from the Emiratis, they’re gonna get it from the Qataris, they’re gonna get it from the Russians. They’re gonna get it from the oligarchs.”
“I’m not joking,” Hunter Biden insisted. “It is the most openly corrupt [administration]. Everything that they do is projection or confession.”
