Biden ‘Confident’ Son Hunter Biden Didn’t Break the Law: White House Chief of Staff

Hunter Biden walks to Marine One on the Ellipse outside the White House in Washington on May 22, 2021. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden believes that Hunter Biden, his son, didn’t break the law, said White House chief of staff Ron Klain in an interview on Sunday.

“Of course the president is confident that his son didn’t break the law,” Klain told ABC News’ “This Week” in response to renewed discussion about his overseas business ties and the content of a laptop hard drive that belongs to him.

There have long been questions swirling around the Biden family and their ties to businesses in China, Ukraine, and other countries.

Documents and messages from Hunter Biden’s laptop referenced a deal that Biden pursued with a Chinese Communist Party-linked emergency firm for which he was paid $5 million, according to a recent article for the Washington Post, which hired two security experts to authenticate the laptop. Other emails related to his work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings—whose founder Mykola Zlovchesky is under investigation by Kyiv for alleged corruption—was also detailed.

The laptop story was broken by the New York Post in late 2020 before Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies moved to limit its reach. Twitter also locked the NY Post’s account for more than two weeks, claiming the outlet published “hacked material.”

However, the contents of the laptop were referenced during a debate at the time between President Donald Trump and candidate Joe Biden. Biden told Trump that his son did not receive millions of dollars from a Russian woman who was the wife of former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov: “That’s not true. None of that is true.”

White House chief of staff Ron Klain attends a briefing in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., June 30, 2021. Saul Loeb/AFP

“Totally discredited,” Biden also remarked at the time. “Look, my son did nothing wrong at Burisma.”

Klain said Biden has had no contact with the Justice Department regarding the laptop.

“The president is confident that his family did the right thing,” Klain told ABC host George Stephanopoulos, former press secretary for President Bill Clinton, on Sunday. “But again, I want to just be really clear. These are actions by Hunter and his brother. They’re private matters. They don’t involve the president. And they certainly are something that no one at the White House is involved in.”

Additionally in the interview, Klain said that Biden isn’t seeking to pressure the Department of Justice on any matter.

“One reason why Joe Biden got elected,” the chief of staff continued, “was he promised he would take the decision over who got prosecuted and what away from the White House and put it in the Justice Department.”