President Biden on Wednesday said his China-linked son Hunter helped shape his handling of an anti-global warming conference in Scotland by urging him to show empathy.
Biden said Hunter, who is well-known for his drug and alcohol problems as well as big-bucks international business pursuits that create conflicts of interest for his dad, reminded him to speak with compassion when talking about the environment.
“I was being reminded by my son Hunter when I was trying to get the COP26 — what’s going on over in Europe on the environment — together, it makes a lot of difference. All empathy is is looking at you and understanding what you’re worried about,” said Biden, who nevertheless drew headlines for appearing to fall asleep during the conference.
The remark was a rare instance of Biden describing his son as influencing official work. He mentioned it while speaking at the funeral service for former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D-Del.),
Information on the president’s interactions with his 51-year-old son is not widely known, in part because the White House has decided not to release visitor log information for Biden’s Delaware homes, where he’s spent 21 of 42 weekends since taking office.
Hunter Biden has repeatedly created conflicts of interest related to his father’s work.
When Biden was vice president and in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine diplomacy, Hunter took a reported $1 million per year job on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, despite no relevant industry experience.
Hunter Biden still owns a 10 percent stake in a Chinese investment firm controlled by state-owned entities, according to recent reports — despite the elder Biden preparing to meet virtually next week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The company, called BHR Partners, was formed just 12 days after Hunter joined his father aboard Air Force Two for a 2013 trip to Beijing.
This year, Hunter Biden launched an art career and is seeking up to $500,000 for his debut works, creating an ethics headache for the White House, which brokered an arrangement with a New York gallery to purportedly keep secret the names of buyers to impede influence-peddling.
Last month, Hunter Biden earned $375,000 from the sale of five prints ahead of a West Coast art showing that was attended by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to India, sparking new ethics questions.
Biden has brushed off concern about people seeking to influence the government through buying his son’s art. “You gotta be kidding me,” Biden told The Post last month.
But President Biden’s involvement with his son’s business interests often is murky.
Documents and photos from a laptop that formerly belonged to Hunter Biden — which also contains a hoard of compromising photos of Hunter with women and doing drugs — indicate Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner with a group of his son’s associates, including a trio of Kazakhs and the Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov.
A Senate report released last year said a firm linked to Hunter Biden received $3.5 million from Baturina in 2014.
One photo depicts Joe Biden posing with the Kazakhstani group at the dinner and one day after the gathering, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed the then-second son to thank him for the opportunity to meet his father.
Photos and emails published by The Post indicate that Joe Biden in 2015 hosted his son and a group of Mexican business associates at the then-vice president’s official residence.
In 2016, Hunter Biden apparently emailed one of those associates while aboard Air Force Two for an official visit to Mexico, complaining that he hadn’t received reciprocal business favors after “I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F’ing White House and the Vice President’s house and the inauguration.”
A 2017 email recovered from Hunter Biden’s laptop described a 10 percent set-aside for “the big guy” as part of a prospective deal involving a Chinese energy company. Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski said Joe Biden was the “big guy.”
