Boebert lacks proof for claim on Hunter Biden’s Burisma pay

Negotiators from the United States and Europe have been meeting with their Russian counterparts to defuse the threat of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Russia has positioned an estimated 100,000 troops along Urkaine’s border.

Some Republicans favor a forceful U.S. response. Others, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., say America has no reason to get involved. Boebert suggested that official U.S. warnings about Russia are a pretext to shore up Biden family business interests in Ukraine.

"Are we all just going to not bring up the $183,000 per month payments from Burisma to Hunter Biden as all this goes down with Ukraine right now?" Boebert tweeted Jan. 25.

Boebert phrased her claim as a rhetorical question, but the part she appeared to assert as fact is that President Joe Biden’s son Hunter received $183,000-a-month payments from Burisma, a Ukraine energy company. 

Some might read the tweet as saying the payments are ongoing, but that’s a matter of interpretation, and her office didn’t say she meant it that way, so we’ll focus on the dollar amount she cited.

Hunter Biden did get paid by Burisma, but how much isn’t known for sure. News reports about his relationship with Burisma have cited various figures, but they’re less than half the $183,000-a-month Boebert claimed. And the amounts haven’t been verified with documentation that has been made public. 

Boebert was not able to provide evidence to back up the number.  

When Biden was vice president in 2014, his son Hunter joined the board of Burisma. The move quickly drew attention because the vice president was deeply involved in U.S.-Ukraine relations. Burisma and its owner were suspected of corruption. The U.S. and Europe were pressing Ukraine to go after bad actors in high places, and Biden boasted that he personally told the country’s president to remove an ineffective prosecutor.

As Biden’s presidential bid gained momentum, Hunter Biden’s business affairs came into sharp focus. Trump and his campaign allies sought to show that the younger Biden’s financial interests had shaped American policy toward Ukraine. No clear evidence emerged, but Burisma’s payments to Hunter Biden were a common talking point.

The numbers cited in that talking point varied widely. In 2019, Trump said Burisma paid Hunter Biden $50,000 a month. In July 2020, he said it was $83,000 a month. In a September 2020 presidential debate, Trump said Burisma paid Biden $186,000 a month.

Boebert’s office said she relied on Trump’s debate figure. It’s unclear why she would lower it to $183,000. 

Boebert spokesperson Ben Stout also offered a separate source. 

"The Daily Mail reported that Hunter Biden's consulting firm received $3.4 million over 18 months starting in 2014, totaling $188,888 per month," Stout said, citing a 2019 article.

But that’s not exactly what the article said. 

It made a distinction between Biden’s earnings and the money paid to his firm. Citing unnamed sources, it said "Hunter Biden received monthly payments of $83,333 for consulting services." The article didn’t claim that the larger amount of $3.4 million — also an unverified figure — all went to Hunter Biden.

The problem is that, so far, the paper trail on how much Burisma paid Hunter Biden is unverified. There are press reports of emails that claim to back this up, but those too lack documentation.

The closest we have to an official statement is a September 2020 report by Senate Republicans. It found that "Hunter Biden was paid as much as $50,000 per month to serve on the board of Burisma." That itself was based on news reports.

The Senate’s figure is a far cry from Boebert’s $183,000, and that Republican estimate came nearly a year after the Daily Mail article with its figure of $83,000. For whatever reason, the GOP senators did not use the Daily Mail’s figures.

As far as Boebert’s larger point, the Republican study said Hunter Biden had "cashed in" on Biden’s vice-presidency, but it stopped short of saying that Hunter Biden’s business interests shaped U.S. policy towards Ukraine. It said "Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board was awkward for all U.S. officials."

Stout also pointed to a 2021 New York Post article about a laptop that seems to have belonged to Hunter Biden. The paper said that emails and invoices on the laptop confirmed the $83,333 figure. The FBI has material from the laptop, but it has not released it.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, said in a statement in October 2019 that Burisma paid Biden, but he didn’t say how much. Mesires said Biden left the board in April 2019.

At some point, the public may get more details. The U.S. attorney for Delaware launched an investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax filings. Hunter Biden acknowledged in late 2020 that the investigation was underway, but there has been no official announcement in over a year.

For his part, Hunter Biden has said that while he broke no laws, his work with Burisma was a political mistake.