Fact Check: Biden Claims No One Brought Up Concerns About Burisma During Impeachment Inquiry

CLAIM: Joe Biden claimed during the final presidential debate that no witnesses in the House impeachment inquiry testified anything was wrong with his son Hunter Biden working for a Ukrainian natural gas firm while he was vice president and the point person on Ukraine.

VERDICT: FALSE. A State Department career diplomat testified that he was so concerned with Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma that he raised the issue with the then-Vice President’s office at the time.

Biden declared during the debate (emphasis added):

Nothing was unethical. Here’s what the deal, with regard to Ukraine, we had this whole question about whether or not because he was on the board. I later learned of Burisma, a company that somehow, I had done something wrong. Yet, every single, solitary person when he was going through his impeachment testifying under oath who worked for him said I did my job impeccably. I carried out U.S. policy. Not one single solitary thing was out of line. Not a single thing. Number one.

However, according to ABC News:

During a closed-door deposition earlier this week, a senior State Department official told House impeachment investigators that he raised ethical concerns about Hunter Biden’s business ties in Ukraine with then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office in 2015, two sources familiar with the deposition confirmed Friday to ABC News, but was ultimately rebuffed.

Deputy Secretary of State George Kent told investigators that he grew so concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest presented by Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian oil and gas company that he conveyed his misgivings to an aide to the then-vice president, the sources said.

Kent said in his testimony that Biden’s aide told him that the vice president didn’t have the “bandwidth” to address Hunter Biden’s professional work because his other son, Beau, was battling cancer, according to the Washington Post, which first reported Kent’s claim.

 

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