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| Carlos Barria/Reuters |
From being appointed senior MBNA vice president (two years out of law school), to a gift of a 2.8-carat diamond from a Chinese energy tycoon, to Burisma Holdings . . .
Late Summer 2006: Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, purchase the hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors. According to an unnamed executive quoted in Politico in August, James Biden declared to employees on his first day, “Don’t worry about investors. We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.” At this time, Joe Biden is months away from becoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second bid for president.
The unnamed executive who spoke to Politico charged that the purchase of the fund was designed to work around campaign-finance laws:
According to the executive, James Biden made it clear that he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. “We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.
Both James and Hunter Biden have denied to Politico that James had ever made these comments.
Up until that time, Hunter Biden had been employed as a consultant to the Delaware bank MBNA, with a $100,000-a-year retainer, according to the New York Times. The bank hired him fresh out of law school and in less than two years promoted him to senior vice president. Biden also separately worked as a lobbyist until 2008, founding the firm Oldaker Biden & Belair, where he represented mostly universities and hospitals but also drug companies such as Achaogen Inc. and Pulmatrix Inc., and the music-sharing company Napster and online gambling sites.
Hunter says he has never lobbied his father on any client matter. But the potential for the appearance of a conflict of interest allegedly troubled the senator at one point. According to court records in a lawsuit filed by former business partner Joseph Lotito, Joe Biden wanted Hunter Biden to find a different line of work because his presidential campaign would be greatly complicated if he remained the father of a Washington lobbyist.
AND THERE”S LOTS AND LOTS MORE HERE.
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