The Tucker Carlson Show - Is Hunter Biden a Pawn for Foreign Countries? Former Business Partner Weighs In
Aired: 2023-11-25
Duration: 11:53


=== Hunter Biden's Role (07:46) ===

[00:00:00]  You're over there to raise money for your real estate fund from the guy from Burisma because he's just a rich guy looking to diversify.
[00:00:07]  They make a ton of money selling natural gas and they want to invest it.
[00:00:11]  Right.
[00:00:11]  He's not interested in your pitch and he says, by the way, since you're here, I'd like you to talk to the president of Poland.
[00:00:16]  Yes.
[00:00:17]  Who then calls you?
[00:00:18]  Yes.
[00:00:19]  Yes.
[00:00:19]  It was coordinated by Vadim, but yes, eventually we somehow got connected on WhatsApp and yes, calls me, invites me to Poland.
[00:00:26]  I was on a plane, I was on a lot flight from, or whatever that airline, what the airline's called, I think it's a lot, from JFK within a couple of days.
[00:00:34]  And I flew directly to Warsaw for 36 hours, sat down with Kwasnovsky, and he said, listen, we've got a great opportunity, energy independence for Ukraine.
[00:00:42]  This company, Burisma, I joined the board.
[00:00:45]  There's a, you know, we've looked at your profile.
[00:00:48]  I know you've got Rosemont.
[00:00:50]  You can raise.
[00:00:51]  And the idea was to raise outside capital for Burisma.
[00:00:55]  So they were like, come join the board.
[00:00:57]  It's a very high-paying opportunity.
[00:01:00]  It wasn't, you know, we didn't talk details on that in that particular meeting, but he's like, trust me, and there's a chance to build an equity position in this business.
[00:01:08]  And this could be, you know, the next Exxon of Ukraine or whatever.
[00:01:12]  I think there's some discovery emails that talk about that.
[00:01:15]  Yeah.
[00:01:15]  Well, why wouldn't it have been?
[00:01:16]  I mean, it was a real company.
[00:01:18]  Exactly.
[00:01:19]  Real company, incredible management team, you know, new age equipment.
[00:01:24]  But why you?
[00:01:26]  Why me?
[00:01:27]  Because I was a berever.
[00:01:29]  You're a true berever, huh?
[00:01:31]  No, why me?
[00:01:33]  No, it's just interesting because you, I mean, you're raising money for a real estate fund, but then the guy from the natural gas company says, talk to the president of Poland about joining the board of our natural gas company.
[00:01:45]  Was Hunter Biden mentioned at all?
[00:01:47]  Hunter Biden was not mentioned, though.
[00:01:52]  I mean, I can't deny that they did some research about Rosemale Seneca partners, but it was not mentioned to me.
[00:02:00]  It's a little, I mean, you sound like a very capable business operator, but not someone who specializes in the energy sector.
[00:02:10]  No, I've had a diverse portfolio.
[00:02:12]  Right.
[00:02:13]  Well, now you know a lot about energy.
[00:02:15]  Yeah, but then.
[00:02:16]  Agreed.
[00:02:16]  Agreed.
[00:02:16]  I had one energy investment that we had made in Texas, but that's true.
[00:02:21]  I was certainly not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert in excavating natural gas.
[00:02:27]  Right.
[00:02:27]  But the president of Poland is asking you to the board.
[00:02:31]  I mean, by the way, lots of weird things happen in life, but I just kind of suspect that maybe this was all about getting Hunter Biden involved.
[00:02:40]  You know, I actually, I think that they saw an opportunity to raise capital.
[00:02:45]  I think they thought that I was close enough to political powers that I don't think that was their initial intention, to be completely honest.
[00:02:55]  I don't think they were like, I was a mark that they identified and then found Hunter.
[00:02:59]  I think it was a little bit more natural than that.
[00:03:02]  And at the end of the day, similar to kind of what happened in my fate, that, you know, be careful what you wish for.
[00:03:09]  Yeah.
[00:03:10]  So how did he get involved?
[00:03:12]  So it was, as you go, you know, go on with the progression of the story.
[00:03:16]  So he's obviously a partner.
[00:03:18]  We're always looking to incent each other and include each other in each of our opportunities.
[00:03:26]  And what happened was I came back, I joined the board, or I started the process of joining the board.
[00:03:30]  I did join the board.
[00:03:31]  I think I was on the board in March of that year of 2014.
[00:03:35]  It was probably my first month there.
[00:03:37]  And then I came back and Hunter was of counsel.
[00:03:41]  And so what I did is I brought him on board as counsel to legally represent the company and help them and basically A firm in DC that would look out for their best interests or any kind of geopolitical.
[00:04:06]  I'm sorry.
[00:04:07]  I'm calling bullshit on just this one thing.
[00:04:10]  So this is a city filled with law firms where every but Hunter is my partner.
[00:04:15]  I know, I know, just saying, like, this is a city where the number one job for a college-educated Caucasian man is lawyer at a firm.
[00:04:24]  Right, exactly.
[00:04:25]  Right.
[00:04:25]  And a lot of those firms deal with foreign transactions and business and whatever.
[00:04:30]  Hunter Biden doesn't have actually like a meaningful history as a practicing attorney.
[00:04:35]  No, no, he's always been in the kind of lobbying world.
[00:04:38]  So, I mean, that's an influence play, right?
[00:04:41]  There.
[00:04:41]  Well, yeah, I think, well, also, I think the firm that he's with, council, was prominent and had a, you know, had a large business in lobbying.
[00:04:48]  So I think, you know, I think it made sense and it was also incenting a business partner of ours.
[00:04:54]  And it was a business partner of mine.
[00:04:56]  I think it was, you know, it made all the logic in the world.
[00:04:59]  And I think if it stayed like that, it would have been a lot.
[00:05:03]  History would have been very different.
[00:05:04]  History would have been.
[00:05:05]  So how did he wind up on the board of Burisma?
[00:05:07]  So what happened was we quickly developed, we brought it, there was a team from Burisma that came in to DC, did some meetings.
[00:05:15]  There was a kind of a lead practitioner on the law side that was brought in to be like the, you know, Hunter was a relationship manager, relationship manager, and then there was like a lead for what things that needed to be done.
[00:05:25]  We need to lobby.
[00:05:26]  Which relationship manager is that like a business card title?
[00:05:29]  Well, it's generally like of council at these law firms.
[00:05:32]  It's to make introductions.
[00:05:33]  Yeah, of course.
[00:05:34]  I just love Como.
[00:05:35]  I should have gone to law school.
[00:05:38]  I aspire to be there.
[00:05:39]  No, it's too big if you can get it.
[00:05:41]  Yeah.
[00:05:44]  Anyway, so no, this is a natural progression.
[00:05:47]  And then, so, you know, a month or two goes by.
[00:05:50]  We're at an economic conference in Italy, Lake Como, which was nice.
[00:05:56]  Beautiful.
[00:05:56]  Or if I can say, as your friend Vadim calls it in a letter I want to ask you about in a minute that we got, it was May of 2014.
[00:06:03]  Following our talks during the visit to the Como Lake.
[00:06:08]  Yes, he's the Como Lake.
[00:06:10]  Exactly.
[00:06:11]  Yeah, Lake Como.
[00:06:12]  Absolutely.
[00:06:13]  It was gorgeous, gorgeous weather, and it was May of 2014.
[00:06:19]  And so, you know, that trip in DC, Vadim had been on that trip.
[00:06:23]  I figured out if there's other executives there, meeting at the law firm in the conference center or a large conference room and got a lot done and seemed to be off to a good start.
[00:06:33]  They visited us.
[00:06:34]  Vadim and Nikolai visited us at the Villadeste at this economic conference.
[00:06:42]  And Hunter was the relationship manager at the time of council.
[00:06:47]  And they kind of struck up a conversation.
[00:06:50]  And Koznievsky was not there, but on WhatsApp and kind of in the conversation.
[00:06:55]  And I think similar to what, as opposed to like me being a mark in an orchestrated effort to get Hunter on board, I think they all of a sudden saw the relationship that I brought by doing this and thought, wait, we can go a step further.
[00:07:12]  We got the president of Poland.
[00:07:13]  We've got this, you know, a couple of finance guys on the board.
[00:07:16]  We've got a couple of Ukrainians and Cypriots for regulatory reasons in those, you know, in those domiciles.
[00:07:22]  And if, and we can get the son of the vice president on the board.
[00:07:25]  And, you know, they saw that opportunity and they made the offer.
[00:07:28]  And I think.
[00:07:30]  At the meeting in Lake Como.
[00:07:32]  At the meeting in La Si.
[00:07:33]  That's fair.
[00:07:34]  I was not at that meeting, but it was a meeting that was done in a sidebar that the idea came back.
[00:07:39]  And I think a month later it was.
[00:07:41]  So what's so interesting, so here's this letter that I referred to at the Como Lake.

=== General Shokin's Signals (04:06) ===

[00:07:47]  And it's May 12th, 2014, 829 a.m.
[00:07:52]  And this is from Vadim Pozhorsky to you and Hunter.
[00:07:56]  And he goes on, and it's kind of complicated, about what he's talking about corruption in Ukraine.
[00:08:02]  But he gets here.
[00:08:03]  He says, we urgently need, urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message, signal, et cetera, to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions, et cetera.
[00:08:15]  And that's from Vadim.
[00:08:17]  Right.
[00:08:17]  They figured it out right away.
[00:08:19]  Absolutely, yes.
[00:08:20]  The term signal in every other kind of market or theater or whatever you want to describe, it's like a pretty, it's a well-used term.
[00:08:31]  So signal, like the U.S. doesn't use it, but it's a very common term to send signals between government and business because government can always shut you down.
[00:08:41]  It's almost like the, you know, the shakedown kind of, I've tried to equate it to something, but you always want to be sending positive signals from that regulatory body, i.e. the government, to the business that you're not going to be shut down.
[00:08:55]  Right.
[00:08:56]  And so I think they're using in a common term to them and sending back here to us and say, you know, like, oh, I hope we're protected kind of thing.
[00:09:07]  That's the term signal.
[00:09:09]  Well, you just flat out.
[00:09:10]  He just flat out says it.
[00:09:11]  We urgently need your advice on how you can use your influence.
[00:09:14]  Right.
[00:09:15]  Right.
[00:09:16]  So, and that's all kind of, again, just for context, it's pretty conventional.
[00:09:21]  Yeah.
[00:09:21]  I mean, I think that's what lobbying firms are for.
[00:09:23]  Yes.
[00:09:24]  But then comes the question of General Shokin, the prosecutor.
[00:09:28]  Right.
[00:09:28]  Tell us, that seems to me, that's when it gets heavy.
[00:09:33]  Right.
[00:09:33]  Okay.
[00:09:34]  So what was that?
[00:09:35]  So Shokin was the, and I'm going to get the dates wrong, but Shokin was the, he was the prosecutor, the head prosecutor in Ukraine.
[00:09:45]  And he was taking a close look at Burisma.
[00:09:48]  So maybe not so different from an attorney general.
[00:09:51]  Right.
[00:09:51]  Right.
[00:09:51]  And but he was taking, but I much more case active, I think.
[00:09:55]  Right.
[00:09:55]  An attorney general is more of like a manager of people that handle cases and they have their independence.
[00:10:00]  This guy's the law.
[00:10:01]  He's like the law, yeah.
[00:10:02]  So the buck stops with him.
[00:10:03]  Hence, the signals are more important in countries outside the United States.
[00:10:07]  So Shokin is taking a close look at Burisma.
[00:10:13]  There were allegations that some of the, you know, some of the deposits or some of the reserves were not authentically acquired or whatever it may be.
[00:10:25]  So those were like the, I think that was the genesis of the complaints.
[00:10:29]  And there were always, you know, being in Ukraine and being in that part of the world, there was always kind of challenges that they were facing.
[00:10:35]  You know, from not being able to get a visa to money being tied up in London.
[00:10:40]  And this was just another, you know, in a series of issues that law firms and strategic advisory firms were hired for to handle these kind of things, right?
[00:10:52]  So the Shokin case was, he was taking a look at Burisma, and there was a big push by European leaders, the Atlantic Council, et cetera, et cetera, to fire Shokin because he was corrupt.
[00:11:08]  Like it's hard to kind of decipher who's, you know, it's all.
[00:11:11]  Can I just ask you, just a sidebar, like, why would the Atlantic Council be getting involved in Shokin here?
[00:11:19]  I mean, that's...
[00:11:19]  Yeah.
[00:11:20]  I mean, I think...
[00:11:21]  I don't know on the Shokin piece.
[00:11:24]  I mean, again, I mean, this is the lead prosecutor in Ukraine.
[00:11:27]  Right.
[00:11:27]  So if Ukraine is actually a country with sovereignty and not just a colony of, say, the neocons of the United States, like, why wouldn't they just let Ukraine deal with their own?
[00:11:37]  Like, why would Western powers even get involved in who the chief prosecutor in Ukraine is?
[00:11:45]  That's a question that I don't know.
[00:11:49]  Younger people say the news is full of lies in Canada Day's motor cabinet.