[2] After graduating from law school in 1996, Biden accepted a consultant position at the bank holding company MBNA, whose employees donated more than $200,000 to his father's senate campaigns over the years.

[27] From 2013 to 2020, Biden served as a member of the board of the China-based private equity fund BHR Partners, of which he acquired a 10% stake in 2017 at a discount to actual value and with borrowed money.

[34][35] Hunter Biden announced his resignation from the board of directors of BHR Partners, effective the end of October 2019, citing "the barrage of false charges" by then-U.S. President Trump.

[50][51][52][53] Christopher Heinz, John Kerry's stepson, opposed his partners Devon Archer and Hunter Biden joining the board in 2014 due to the reputational risk.

[2][48] While serving as vice president, Joe Biden joined other Western leaders in encouraging the government of Ukraine to fire the country's top prosecutor Viktor Shokin,[56][57] who was widely criticized for blocking corruption investigations.

[60][61] Biden lobbied the U.S. State Department on behalf of Burisma to help secure a potentially lucrative energy project in Italy while his father was still Vice President.

Embassy officials who handled the letter were concerned about the son of the sitting vice president reaching out on behalf of a foreign company, and Biden's request for a meeting was ultimately unmet.

[50][62] Since early 2019, Hunter and his father Joe Biden have been the subjects of false and baseless claims of corrupt activities in a Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory pushed by then-U.S. president Donald Trump and his allies.

[63] Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed in 2019, without evidence, that Joe Biden had sought the dismissal of Shokin in order to protect his son and Burisma Holdings.

[76] The United States House of Representatives initiated a formal impeachment inquiry on September 24, 2019, against Trump on the grounds that he may have sought to use U.S. foreign aid and the Ukrainian government to damage Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.

[56][78][79] During 2019 and 2020, Republican senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley investigated Hunter Biden's involvement with Burisma, as well as allegations that Democrats colluded with the Ukrainian government to interfere in the 2016 election.

[86] When Johnson released the final report on the investigation, it contained no evidence that Joe Biden had pushed for Shokin's removal in order to benefit Hunter or Burisma.

[87][88] In June 2020, former Ukrainian prosecutor general Ruslan Riaboshapka stated that an audit of thousands of old case files he had ordered in October 2019 had found no wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

[90] The recordings, which were not verified as authentic and appeared heavily edited, depicted Biden linking loan guarantees for Ukraine to the ouster of the country's prosecutor general.

The Treasury Department added Derkach "waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election" including by the release of "edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S.

[97][98] Two Republicans on a Senate investigation committee in 2020 claimed that Russian businessperson Yelena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, wire-transferred $3.5 million in 2014 to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, of which Biden had previously been a partner.

The Washington Post reported in April 2022 that the partners of Rosemont Seneca Thornton had agreed to dissolve the organization before the 2014 wire transfer, though it continued to be operated by Devin Archer to facilitate real estate transactions for eastern and central Asia investors, while Biden was uninvolved.

[102][103] The New York Times and CNN described the investigation as having started in late 2018 and being related to potential violations of tax and money laundering laws and Biden's business dealings in foreign countries, principally China.

[107][108] The New York Times reported in March 2022 that, since 2018, Biden and possibly others had been under investigation by federal prosecutors in Delaware, with a grand jury convened to subpoena and hear evidence.

One April 2014 email, written by Biden to his business partner as their work with Burisma was about to begin, noted that his father, then the vice president who would soon visit Kyiv, should "be characterized as part of our advice and thinking—but what he will say and do is out of our hands".

The email also stated that Burisma officials "need to know in no uncertain terms that we will not and cannot intervene directly with domestic policymakers, and that we need to abide by FARA and any other U.S. laws in the strictest sense across the board".

[137][138] In August 2024, prosecutors alleged that Biden agreed to lobby on behalf of a Romanian businessman seeking to "influence U.S. government agencies" while his father was vice president.

In an official White House statement from President Biden, he said that he believed his son was "selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted", and blamed political pressure for the failure of a plea deal for Hunter.

[170]On October 14, 2020, twenty days prior to the 2020 United States presidential election, the New York Post published an article based on content provided to the publication by Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

[172] The article's veracity was strongly questioned at the time by many mainstream media outlets as well as dozens of current and former intelligence officials for possibly being a Russian disinformation campaign.

The document was determined to be a quarterly rental payment for office space at the House of Sweden in Washington, D.C.[182] Biden's application for a position in the U.S. Navy Reserve was approved in May 2013.

[183] At age 43, Biden was accepted as part of a program that allows a limited number of applicants with desirable skills to receive commissions and serve in staff positions.

[186][2] Biden also stated that he did not appeal due to the likelihood that this would result in the press becoming aware of the discharge; however, it was eventually disclosed to The Wall Street Journal by a Navy official.

[207][208] Biden initially denied that the child was his, but a DNA test, conducted as part of a paternity suit filed in May 2019 by Roberts, confirmed he is the father.

[219][220] He believes his addiction issues are linked to episodes of family loss he suffered,[221] beginning with the 1972 motor vehicle accident that killed his mother and sister.