Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, publicly acknowledged this week that his decision to join the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings in 2014 was a mistake. The admission came during an interview on comedian Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, taped Monday, where Biden addressed years of scrutiny and allegations concerning his business dealings.
"It obviously turns out to be a mistake. But not because of anything that I did, and not because of anything that my dad did." — Hunter Biden
During the candid exchange, Shepard directly questioned Biden about accusations of cutting deals with a Ukrainian oligarch and whether his conduct had been "above board" for the past decade and a half. Biden responded directly to the long-running allegations, stating, "Here’s the validity. The validity is that I should never have taken the board seat with Burisma. That’s the validity of it.”
Biden’s appointment to the Burisma board in April 2014 has been a persistent point of controversy. At the time, his father, Joe Biden, was serving as Vice President and was a key figure in the Obama administration’s policy toward Ukraine. Critics have long highlighted the potential for a conflict of interest, given the timing and the fact that Burisma was facing corruption allegations in Ukraine and reportedly sought assistance from the consulting firm Blue Star Strategies, which Hunter Biden helped connect it to.
However, Hunter Biden used the podcast platform to delineate his role from any governmental entanglement. He asserted that his involvement “was not with Ukraine. Was not with a foreign government. It was not with an oligarch.” To underscore his experience and qualifications, Biden listed a number of other prominent positions he held prior to and alongside his Burisma role. He cited serving on 14 other boards, including as chairman of the US World Food Program, vice chairman of Amtrak, chairman of the Truman National Security Project, and chairman of the Center for National Policy. He also mentioned his four years as a professor at Georgetown’s master’s program of the school of foreign service, his consulting business, and extensive international travel.
Biden framed his Burisma engagement as a natural extension of his legitimate legal career, pointing to his position as counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP before the board appointment. He recounted initially declining the board seat, opting instead to advise Burisma as an attorney. According to Biden, it was only months later that former Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski persuaded him to formally join the board, a request spurred by the pressures Burisma faced following Russia’s incursion into eastern Ukraine, which threatened its natural gas operations. He maintained that the arrangement was never secretive and was presented to him as an open and publicly disclosed position.
While expressing regret for the decision, Biden firmly denied any wrongdoing on his part or his father's. "It obviously turns out to be a mistake. But not because of anything that I did, and not because of anything that my dad did," he stated. He specifically addressed the commonly cited text message where a Burisma board secretary mentioned meeting his father, explaining, "I mean there’s a text message in which the board secretary of Burisma says it was nice meeting your dad and I know we were at a restaurant together, and he sat down and there were 10 other people at the table." Biden clarified that he introduced the individual to his father, who was "in from Ukraine," and that "that’s it." He added, "Now they had an impeachment hearing over that. And so I take responsibility for doing something that could ever cause the perception of that.”
This is not the first instance of Biden publicly regretting his association with Burisma. He made a similar admission in December 2025, also characterizing the board seat as a mistake. Monday’s podcast appearance adds to a continuing narrative that has shadowed the Biden family for years, with critics persistently highlighting the overlapping timelines between Hunter Biden’s business activities and his father’s vice-presidential responsibilities in Ukraine. Throughout the controversy, Biden’s stance has remained consistent: expressing regret for the decision to join the board, while steadfastly denying any impropriety by himself or his father related to the role.
