A career State Department official told impeachment investigators this week that he raised concerns with a senior Obama White House official in 2015 about the son of then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. holding a position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
But the warning from George P. Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state, was ignored, according to two people familiar with Mr. Kent’s testimony. Mr. Kent, of the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said he told the official that Hunter Biden’s position could look like a conflict of interest, given his father’s role, and would complicate American efforts to encourage Ukraine to clean up corruption.
The White House official told Mr. Kent that the elder Mr. Biden did not have the “bandwidth” to address the concerns while his older son, Beau, was undergoing cancer treatment, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the private deposition.
President Trump on Friday latched onto the rare bit of good news for him coming out of the House’s impeachment inquiry. Mr. Kent had given Democrats plenty of fodder to drive their inquiry forward, but the emergence of any information that could tarnish the Bidens was welcome at the White House, even if White House officials have declared the inquiry illegitimate.
“He excoriated the Obama administration and Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s son, saying that he has tremendous problems, tremendous problems, with Joe Biden’s son and the Ukraine,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Kent, citing news reports. He added, “It’s been a big deal.”
Mr. Kent’s remarks about the Bidens were first reported by The Washington Post. Mr. Kent also voiced concerns about the Trump administration’s handling of the United States’ relationship with Ukraine, testifying that he and other career officials were all but cut out of decisions regarding the country after a May meeting at the White House.
Hunter Biden’s work for the Ukrainian firm Burisma Holdings, and an unsubstantiated allegation that his father took official action as vice president to protect the firm from a Ukrainian prosecutor, lie at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Trump and his private lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, both pressured Ukraine’s leaders to investigate the Bidens, and House lawmakers are examining whether the White House withheld around $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to pressure Kiev to conduct the investigation of the Bidens.
It might be useful to Mr. Trump to be able to say his concerns about Hunter Biden’s work were shared by State Department officials during the Obama administration. But pressing that point holds risks. On Friday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, expressed unease that the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, had, during a televised White House briefing Thursday, indicated a link between the withholding of military assistance and the demand for a Biden investigation.
Mr. Kinzinger told CNN he was not sure what Mr. Mulvaney was saying the president wanted Ukraine to investigate when he told reporters the aid was withheld pending the investigation. But, he said, if it had anything to do with the Bidens, that would be serious, “because it would be, if it’s true, taxpayer-funded aid and policy for political reasons, which is totally wrong.”