After salary cut, Hunter Biden would continue to work with Burisma for two more years, leaving the company in April 2019.
President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, saw his salary from a Ukrainian natural gas company cut in half after his father left office in 2017, new charging documents indicate.
The younger Biden was charged in California federal court on Thursday with two felony tax evasion charges, a felony charge for filing a false tax return, and six additional misdemeanor offenses for failure to pay taxes between 2016 and 2019.
A federal indictment in the case describes the president’s son’s sources of income for the period in which he was charged, including his work on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.
Mr. Biden began working with the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings in 2014 while his father was serving as vice president. The indictment filed by Special Counsel David Weiss says Mr. Biden received a $1 million annual salary from the Ukrainian firm until March of 2017, when the firm cut his annual compensation down to $500,000.
This salary cut from Burisma came after his father left the White House and President Donald Trump assumed office on Jan. 20, 2017.
Despite the salary cut, the indictment indicates Hunter Biden continued to work with Burisma for another two years leaving the company in April of 2019. Joe Biden launched his campaign for president that same month.
The younger Biden’s time working for Burisma has been a point of interest for Republicans for years.
President Trump faced his first impeachment in the fall of 2019 over a call he made with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he alluded to allegations that then-Vice President Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to remove a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who is alleged to have been investigating Burisma.
President Biden’s involvement in his family’s business dealings has been a point of focus in an ongoing Republican-led impeachment inquiry.
According to an investigative file released earlier this year, a confidential FBI source alleged Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky raised concerns that Mr. Shokin’s investigation would harm the company and discussed paying $5 million to “one Biden” and $5 million to “another Biden” to “deal with Shokin.” The unverified FBI source also said Mr. Zlochevsky also described the younger Biden as less intelligent than his dog, but that it was necessary to keep him on the board of the company “so everything will be okay.”
By Ryan Morgan
