The Washington Post reports:

When then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son joined the board of an obscure Ukrainian gas company half a decade ago, it was a stunning coup for its owner, a former Ukrainian minister working to remake the company’s image as he faced a money-laundering investigation.

For Hunter Biden, the job came with risks: Ukraine was in the throes of political upheaval, and there was building scrutiny of former government officials profiting in the lucrative gas industry. His father was the face of the Obama administration’s effort to get Ukraine to crack down on corruption.

The region was so unsettled that one of Hunter Biden’s investment firm partners at the time — former secretary of state John F. Kerry’s stepson — believed that joining the board of Burisma Holdings was a bad idea and ended his business relationship with Biden and another partner, his spokesman told The Washington Post.

Now, more than five years later, with Joe Biden running for president, Hunter Biden’s decision to get involved with the Ukrainian firm is the backdrop of an extraordinary whistleblower complaint against President Trump that is reshaping the 2020 political landscape.

Revelations that Trump, along with his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, pressed the Ukrainians to pursue investigations into Burisma and examine the role of the Bidens have triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House, with allegations that Trump withheld U.S. support for Ukraine to ensure Kiev investigated his potential rival in the presidential election.

No evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Bidens has surfaced. Giuliani’s primary allegation — that Joe Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to quash a probe into the former minister and Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky — is not substantiated and has been widely disputed by former U.S. officials and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists.

Still, Hunter Biden’s decision to associate himself with the company has raised an uncomfortable question the Biden campaign is struggling to explain: Why didn’t the vice president take steps to head off a perceived conflict of interest between his efforts to crack down on corruption in Ukraine and his son’s work for a gas tycoon investigated for abusing his position as a government official?

“Why didn’t Joe Biden tell Hunter, ‘Come off it. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ ” said Oliver Bullough, a British journalist on the advisory board of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, or AntAC, a nonprofit in Ukraine. [Continue reading…]