Several people on the Burisma board had little to no experience in the energy sector or Ukraine. In fact most people on most boards have no direct experience in the specific domain of the company. Boards are not operating the company, they aren't managing it. They are governing it. The most common way to become a board member is to invest in the company. Obviously most companies are not investment companies, ergo outside investors are not experts in the company's domain.
The chairman of the board was a Columbia-educated lawyer from Sullivan and Cromwell (similar to Hunter's Boies Schiller role) who went into investment banking at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.
By what metric is $65,000 per month "pretty high?" Compared to other Burisma board members? Board members are typically paid the same base salary.
Yes? As described above: it’s the type of educational and career trajectory that is typical of nepobabies. “Here’s another nepobaby” is not a refutation.
I’m not sure what evidence of impropriety one is supposed to derive from a publicly traded American company having a different board compensation scheme than a privately held Ukrainian company… perhaps you could connect the dots more explicitly?
So you agree that she is a nepo baby. That is, not particularly qualified. The thing is, when you are the vice president of the United states, and as the article says, "the Obama administration’s point person on relations with Kyiv", then any reasonable person would say you should be careful about letting your children take advantage of their nepobaby status in Kiev specifically!
Regarding compensation for the position, you had said "of course he was compensated, board members are often compensated". I am pointing out that it is very unusual for them to get that much compensation, to the point where you should be suspicious.
Yes, my view was adequately described here: "Obviously he's a nepobaby but nothing on his resume is atypical of the types of people who serve on boards for companies like Burisma. Top law school, cushy investor and advisory gigs, serving on boards, etc."
That would imply there are many similar nepobabies serving in such roles. "Nepobaby" does not necessarily mean someone is not qualified for a given role. It means they utilize their parents' status to grow their own. Obviously a Senator's child has massive advantages throughout their life. As described above... those advantages often produce exactly the life path he had (just like his Burisma board colleagues, and just like many board members of many corporate boards).
Perhaps you should say explicitly what you mean by "you should be careful about..." What specifically constitutes "being careful" about such a thing? And what exactly are they being careful of? The possibility of an appearance of impropriety?
Getting sweet gigs because your dad is a Senator and then a VP because people love hiring cushy connected people to cushy connected jobs is not, in and of itself improper. It's absolutely a reason to pay close attention to all such family members of all such politicians, but if the "paying close attention" doesn't yield actual evidence of actual wrongdoing, you can't just assume otherwise.
P.S. Don't put in quotes things that people didn't actually say. That was quite clearly not my line of questioning.
If you are working for the government on relations with a particular country, and your son gets a job paying $750,000 a year working at the biggest company in that country, then you need to resign or get your son to resign.
Please let me know if you want further clarifications.
So when Hunter joined Burisma he also had a cushy job as counsel at Boies Schiller. Probably getting paid $1MM+. Boies Schiller is a US law firm, and Joe Biden is the VP of the US.
Does this also invoke appearance of impropriety to you?
It would depend on the cases he takes. But Burisma interests were very closely tied to Ukrainian interests, which are not necessarily US interests. So it was clearly improprietary.
It is true that there were conflicts of interest for other work that Hunter did, though, such as when his father was visiting China on a diplomatic trip.
The cringey thing about boards of directors in general, and about the discussion surrounding Biden and his scandal specifically, is that board members being picked for superficial reasons and being paid to vote mindlessly with the majority when the board votes is regrettably very common and normal. Perhaps most people don't understand that, and think that "board member" is usually a real job.
> he was paid $65,000 per month, which is pretty high.
I doubt it's high for a petrochemical conglomerate.
Can you be very specific in how Hunter "defrauded the American public?" I genuinely have never heard a specific allegation (other than like drugs and hookers and guns, obviously)
Is there an alternate reality where the dem aligned mass media didn't completely bury the ridiculously salacious laptop story (drugs, money for access aaaand onlyfans level nudity!!) to steer the election?
Because i distinctly recall the head of what to that point I though was a credible journalistic organization saying she didnt want to "waste people's time" with that.
The alternate reality is the one where "dem aligned mass media _did_ completely bury" -- because it's all I heard about for months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months, and months.
Pretty sure I didn't have any horses in that race - frankly I found the very coordinated campaign by ostensibly-independent journalistic orgs to discredit the story ahead of the election (russian plot! man your tinfoil hats!) far, far more interesting that pictures of Hunter's dong.
Performatively pretending the above didn't happen is intellectually dishonest.
You're moving the goalposts now because your original claim was that "dem aligned mass media _did_ completely bury" the story "to steer the election."
Your hyperbolic and partisan language makes it obvious you aren't simply a neutral observer, and implies that you had a horse in that race, and you're still mad that he lost.
Or else you aren't American, in which case your investment in the Trumpist narrative is just kind of pathetic. Like Americans giving a shit about the British royal family.
There literally is a NYT article alluding the whole store is fake and should be dismissed, and (post election ) NYT article admitting it is not. Your prefered the definition of "bury" must exclusively involve shovels and earthwork.
Money for access is a stretch, at least if you mean for Joe. Some speakerphone conversations that included no business, and zero evidence of Joe ever doing anything untoward that benefited any of Hunter's associates.
Archer was quite explicit in his testimony that if anything, Hunter was basically scamming them with the illusion of access.
Which, well, is bad, but if anything, the situation reflects that Joe never let his son influence him to do anything corrupt, which turns it entirely into a bunch of TMZ level drama about Hunter's drug and prostitution habits.
And I still heard about the laptop plenty before the election. If that is a buried story, then plenty of widely published and discussed stories would be buried by your definition.
The amount of attention it has received has always been silly.
Biden's laptop was in the possession of a computer shop in the US, and the owner leaked its contents to the media.
Kushner's phone data was in the possession of Dutch intelligence who didn't want the public to know they had it -- and as far as I know, this was not public knowledge until today.
Biden’s laptop was in the possession of “someone” who brought it to a blind computer repair person (seriously!), who then got in touch with Rudy Giuliani, who then leaked the contents to the media… and so we can’t really know who actually gained possession of it. The repair man was blind lol.
I think it's becoming clear that although the media just happily accepts the left-wing bias accusations, they are by no means left-wing. They shouted every random Biden mistake from the rooftops while this administration mostly gets a free pass.
