Hunter Biden’s Testimony in Context – FactCheck.org

Republicans heading up the impeachment inquiry have frequently cited instances in which Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone while he was with business associates as evidence that Joe Biden knew about and participated in his son’s overseas business deals.

During his testimony to the committee, Archer revealed that on about 20 occasions over a 10-year period, Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone to exchange pleasantries with Hunter Biden’s business associates, part of what Archer described as the “brand” that Hunter Biden brought to foreign business deals.

But contrary to what some Republicans claimed, Archer said Joe Biden never discussed any business on those calls, and typically did not even know to whom he was speaking.

During his testimony on Feb. 28, Hunter Biden defended the calls as benign and insisted they had nothing to do with Joe Biden participating in his business endeavors.

“Over the course of the last 30 years … I’m certain my dad has called me [on speakerphone],” Biden said. “My dad calls me like I’m sure a lot of your parents do or a lot of you do with your children, and if I’m with people that are friends of mine, I’ll have him say hi.”

“It is nothing nefarious literally,” Biden said. “You understand my relationship with my family. When my dad was 29 years old, he woke up one day, went to work, and got a phone call and lost his wife and his daughter. And, in that same accident, he also lost almost my brother and myself. And then, when I was 46 years old, my 47-year-old brother died.

“And in our family, when you have a call from — I call him or he calls me or I call one of my — his grandkids or one of my children, you always pick up the phone. It’s something that we always do. And you can ask anybody that I know; it does not have to do with Devon. If my dad calls me and I’m in the middle of something, I either get up from the table or I answer the phone at the table if it’s with people that I have a long-term relationship with.”

Hunter Biden testified that there were also instances when, while dining with business associates, his father stopped by and exchanged pleasantries.

When Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz raised the issue of Joe Biden sitting down at a restaurant table that included a Burisma executive, Hunter Biden drew a distinction between someone meeting his father, who was the vice president then, and “having a meeting” together.

“They did not have a meeting; they met, which is a very, very important distinction with a difference,” Hunter Biden said.

Gaetz asked Biden to clarify “how you can maintain that your father had nothing to do with your business ventures when your business associate is talking about an interaction with your father and then wanting to have coffee with you subsequently to discuss it.”

Biden said that if his father “came in this room and shook everybody’s hand, as he would, because, as you know — and you guys have to do it yourselves. You walk these halls, you go to events, you go to dinners, you go to dinners for, you know, from everything under the sun, you sit at a table, you are at a table with 14 other people; ‘It was nice to meet you,’ ‘It was nice to meet you.’ Does it mean that you had a meeting?”