Hunter Biden’s Burisma Salary Was Slashed When Trump Took Office
Burisma Holdings slashed Hunter Biden’s huge salary almost immediately after President Donald Trump was sworn into office, according to a new indictment.
While his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, ran the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, Hunter was paid over $83,000 a month in salary to sit on the board at Burisma, bank records show.
Burisma, a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy company, hired Hunter Biden in 2014 and paid him a $1 million a year salary even though he had zero experience in the industry.
However, a new indictment against the president’s son shows that Hunter Biden’s salary was cut in half after Trump took office and the figure continued to plummet each year until he left the company in 2019.
His salary dropped significantly beginning in March 2017, just over one month after Trump was sworn into office on January 20.
The information was revealed in the new indictment leveled against Hunter Biden by a grand jury in California on Thursday for numerous tax-related charges.
“In or around April 2014, the Defendant joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings Limited,” the indictment reads.
“Burisma agreed to pay the Defendant an annual salary of approximately $1,000,000, to be paid in monthly disbursements,” the indictment adds.
“In March 2017, Burisma reduced his compensation to approximately $500,000 a year but he continued to serve on the board of directors until in or around April 2019.
“As a result, he received a total of approximately $1,002,016 in 2016, $630,556 in 2017, $491,939 in 2018, and $160,207 in 2019.”
According to the new indictment, Burisma cut Hunter Biden’s salary in half two months after Trump took office. That cannot be a mistake. pic.twitter.com/16ASwCVQ7G
— Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) December 8, 2023
The indictment explains that Hunter Biden appeared to not report his 2014 Burisma income on his 1040 tax form.
His money from Burisma in 2014 went to a shell company.
He formed the shell company with another business associate and Burisma board member whose identity is withheld in the indictment.
“The Defendant did not report his income from Burisma on his 2014 Form 1040,” the indictment asserts.
“All the money the Defendant received from Burisma in 2014 went to a company, hereafter ‘ABC’, and was deposited into its bank account.
“ABC and its bank account were owned and controlled by a business partner of the Defendant’s, Business Associate 5. Business Associate 5 was also a member of Burisma’s Board of Directors.”
However, the identity of Hunter’s business partner has already been established publicly.
Bank records released by the House Oversight Committee show that Hunter Biden and his former business associate Devon Archer created a holding company in 2014 for the Burisma money.
This information was also confirmed by testimony from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler.
“All right,” Ziegler testified to the House Ways and Means Committee in June.
“So essentially for 2014, we had found that Hunter didn’t report any of the money he earned from Burisma.
“So the reason why this is important is because Hunter set it up this way, to not — to essentially earn the money through his friend’s corporation and then have his friend pay him back half of the money as loans, quote, unquote, loans.”
Archer joined Burisma’s board in spring 2014 right before the company hired Hunter Biden.
He owned the holding company and paid taxes on the income he and Hunter Biden brought in from Burisma.
This arrangement continued until Hunter Biden redirected his portion of the money to his Owasco P.C. business account, according to the indictment.
“Because he owned ABC, Business Associate 5 paid taxes on income that he and the Defendant received from Burisma,” the indictment says.
“Starting in November 2015, the Defendant directed his Burisma Board fees to an Owasco, PC bank account that he controlled.”
Archer testified before the House Oversight Committee in July, as Slay News reported.
He described how the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma from scrutiny.
Archer recalled Joe Biden speaking with his son’s business associates around 20 times.
He also described a dinner Joe Biden attended in the spring of 2015 alongside Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.
In addition, Archer told lawmakers about an instance where Hunter Biden “called D.C.” on Burisma’s behalf after pressure from company executives at the firm’s December 2015 board meeting.
He was unable to confirm whether then-Vice President Biden was on the other end of the phone call.
Burisma hired lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies in November 2015.
The firm sent the company Joe Biden’s talking points for his upcoming trip to Ukraine, according to an internal memo released in September by the Ways and Means Committee.
Emails released by the Ways and Means Committee show Blue Star and Hunter Biden’s former business associate Eric Schwerin celebrated a “victory lap” the next year when it appeared Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky was going to be let off by Ukrainian authorities.
The lobbying firm disclosed its relationship with Zlochevsky in a May 2022 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) form listing $60,000 worth of payments for Blue Star’s work.
In addition, Blue Star conducted lobbying for the Ukrainian prosecutor who let off Zlochevsky, internal State Department emails show.
The statute of limitations expired for the 2014-15 tax years after Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves declined to partner with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss on the case, Weiss confirmed when he testified in November before the House Judiciary Committee.
IRS whistleblowers Shapley and Ziegler have testified about potential Burisma-related charges in the 2014-15 tax years under D.C.’s jurisdiction rather than the Central District of California, where Biden was indicted Thursday for his alleged tax issues.
The whistleblowers were the first ones to disclose Graves’ conduct and the expiration of the statute of limitations.
President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 after he defeated twice-failed Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Shortly after his father’s vice presidency concluded, Hunter Biden and his business associates received $3 million from Chinese energy firm State Energy HK, the indictment lays out.
The money was funneled from an account connected to the Chinese Communist Party-controlled energy company CEFC.
Hunter Biden himself received $1 million of the CEFC funds and redirected a portion of the money to another business associate.
The indictment outlines additional income Hunter Biden received from Hudson West III, his joint business venture with CEFC associates after his income from Burisma dried up.
He made a total of $2.3 million in 2017 alone, even with the reduced salary from Burisma, the indictment states.
Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison for an assortment of felony and misdemeanor charges in California related to his failure to pay taxes on time.
A House memo from September shows that the Biden family and its business associates hauled in more than $24 million from foreign sources over a five-year period concluding in 2019.
“Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement.
His client is also facing federal gun charges in Delaware to which he pleaded not guilty in October.
House Republicans are also seeking to have Hunter Biden appear for a closed-door deposition on December 13 in front of the Oversight Committee.
Lowell, Bill Clinton’s former impeachment lawyer, offered to have Biden testify publicly instead of showing up for the deposition, a proposal GOP lawmakers quickly rejected.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) have threatened to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if he defies a subpoena from the Oversight Committee and fails to attend the deposition.
Comer, Jordan, and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) are leading the impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
The inquiry is based on evidence of the president’s son’s foreign business dealings and the IRS whistleblower allegations of special treatment during the Hunter Biden investigation.
The White House has called the inquiry “illegitimate” and said Joe Biden was “never in business” with his son.
The president himself has said Archer’s testimony is “not true” and denied ever meeting with his son’s business associates, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
House Republicans are weighing a floor vote to officially authorize the impeachment inquiry and strengthen its legal standing.
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