Hunter Biden Says Foreign Entanglements A 'Mistake' Because They Gave Ammunition To Trump

Hunter Biden broke his silence Tuesday, saying he regrets giving a hook “to some very unethical people” with which to attack his father by getting involved in foreign business deals that have had political implications for his father’s career and admitting the Biden name opened doors for him that otherwise might have remained closed.

In an interview aired by ABC, Biden, 49, the son of former Vice President and Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, said he may have exercised “poor judgment” but never did anything wrong and characterized the current bruhaha as a “ridiculous conspiracy idea.”

“However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is ... a swamp in—in—in many ways? Yeah,” Biden said, adding, "I gave a hook to some very unethical people to act in illegal ways to try to do some harm to my father. That's where I made the mistake."

As the Trump impeachment inquiry has heated up, the president has been targeting the younger Biden, questioning his involvement with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and his position at a Chinese private-equity firm. The impeachment investigation was triggered by a July 25 phone call President Trump made to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during which he asked him to conduct an investigation of the Bidens. Later, he also asked the Chinese to conduct their own inquiry.

Trump, whose family has significant overseas dealings, has described the Bidens as “stone cold corrupt” in a bid to divert attention from the impeachment proceedings. There is no evidence Joe Biden improperly intervened on behalf of his son, but the controversy prompted Biden to unveil a sweeping ethics proposal that includes a ban on foreign lobbying.

Hunter Biden, who was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine, rejected allegations he was unqualified to sit on Burisma’s board, noting he was vice chairman of Amtrak and chaired the board of the U.N. World Food Program, in addition to working for “one of the most prestigious law firms in – in the world,” Boies Schiller Flexner.

“I think that I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more,” he said. At the same time, he admitted: “I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”

Biden said Trump and his minions have twisted facts and sometimes gotten them flat out wrong. He described the situation as feeling like “’Alice in Wonderland,’ where you’re up on the real world and then you fall down the rabbit hole, and, you know, the president’s the Cheshire Cat, asking you questions about crazy things that don’t bear any resemblance to the reality of anything that has to do with me.”

He described Trump’s tirades and the “lock him up chants” led by Trump’s son, Eric, as “all noise” and said his father has never made a decision without taking into account what is in the best interests of the American people.

“I take full responsibility …,” Biden said. “Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever.”

Biden has been maintaining a low profile and broke his silence only after Trump tweeted, “Where’s Hunter?” in all caps.

“Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah," he said, again referring to fallout from his overseas business. "But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not."

Biden said he never discussed his foreign business ventures with his father and has no interest in participating in the impeachment investigation.

The younger Biden announced Sunday he would step down from the board of the Chinese-backed private equity firm and end all foreign business ventures if his father is elected president in 2020.

"I'm making that commitment,” he said. “Let’s see if anybody else makes that commitment. But that's the commitment that I'm making."