Hunter Biden joins list of West Wing kids landing lucrative corporate gigs
Hunter Biden concedes he probably wouldn't have landed a high-paid position on a foreign company's board if he weren't the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The 49-year-old, who made the admission in a television interview that aired Tuesday, isn't the only child of politicians both Democratic and Republican to strike it big in business, however.
Chelsea Clinton, the 39-year-old daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, joined the board of media company IAC in 2011 as a 31-year-old. She earned almost $300,000 in stock options and cash last year, according to a regulatory filing. Barbara Bush, the daughter of former president George W. Bush, is on the board of a healthcare nonprofit she co-founded.
And her uncle, Neil Bush, drew unflattering scrutiny, while serving on the board of a savings and loan firm when the industry careened into crisis during President George H.W. Bush's White House term.
Here's a look at their resumes:
Hunter Biden
A single bullet point on Hunter Biden's resume -- his tenure as a member of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019 -- is a big part of Democrats' impeachment inquiry into President Trump — but what other ventures has the Yale Law School graduate been a part of?
Biden reportedly made as much as $50,000 a month in his Burisma role, and Trump's request that Ukraine investigate it for potential corruption -- a request that a whistleblower says the president linked to financial aid from the U.S. -- pushed Democrats to explore removing the real estate mogul from office.
"I'm a human. Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things," Biden said during an interview on "Good Morning America" that aired Tuesday. "But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not."
His father, Joe Biden, defended both his son and himself during a Democratic presidential debate later the same day.
Hunter Biden appears on an episode of "Good Morning America," Oct. 15, 2019.
"My son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong,” declared the former vice president and long-time senator from Delaware. "I carried out the policy of the United States government, which was to root out corruption in Ukraine, and that’s what we should be focusing on."
Hunter Biden's other ties range from BHR, a firm backed by state-owned Chinese entities, to Catholic Charities DC, where he was in the president's advisory group. The younger Biden recently said he would step down from his unpaid position on BHR's board.
Much of his career has centered in Washington, D.C., where he was a founding member of law/lobbying firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair. Biden graduated from Georgetown University with a history degree in 1992. After he finished law school in 1996, he took a job with MBNA Corp., a lender later taken over by another company.
He was there until 1998, when he took a job as executive director of economy policy coordination at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration. Biden received consulting fees from MBNA from 2001 to 2005, however, and according to one company official, had a $100,000-a-year retainer.
In 2001, he founded his law/lobbying firm and drew clients from universities to hospitals and drug companies Achaogen Inc. and Pulmatrick Inc., according to lobbying records.
Biden was nominated in 2006 to a five-year term on the board of Amtrak, the nationwide passenger rail service. U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, then the junior senator from Biden's home state of Delaware, supported the nomination and noted that the younger Biden had "spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains."
He eventually rose to vice chairman of Amtrak's board. During the same period, he served as interim CEO of $500 million hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors, stepping down in 2007 before his father became chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the third time.
Chelsea Clinton
Former president Bill Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and a hedge fund manager for Avenue Capital Investment after earning a bachelor's degree in history from Stanford in 2001 and a master's in international relations from University College, Oxford, in 2003.
In 2011, she returned to the British university to pursue a doctorate in international relations while working a nearly three-year stint as a special correspondent at NBC, where she earned $600,000 per year. Chelsea Clinton also earned a master's in public health degree from Columbia University and became vice chair for the Clinton Foundation.
Pictured from left, Rehema Ellis, Chief Education Correspondent for NBC News, John Merrow, Education Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, and Chelsea Clinton, Special Correspondent for NBC News, Oct. 08, 2013. (Photo by: Rob Kim/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUnivers
In addition to IAC, Clinton has been on Expedia's board of directors since 2017, earning more than $535,000 in cash and stock in 2017, the most recent year for which a regulatory filing was available. IAC and Expedia are run by Barry Diller, a Clinton friend and donor.
Neil Bush
The son of former President George H.W. Bush drew scrutiny over his work on the board of Silverado Savings & Loan in Colorado, which collapsed in 1988 -- a month after his father was elected to succeed former President Ronald Reagan. Neil Bush and other directors and officers were accused of mismanagement in a subsequent lawsuit by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which estimated the failure would cost taxpayers $1 billion.
The claim was settled out of court.
Neil Bush went on to co-found an education software company called Ignite! Learning, making a reported $130,000 per year as of 2003. Bush has consulted for multiple companies, including Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing and Kopin.
He made $2 million in stock options over five years from Grace, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, and $10,000 per board meeting. The Associated Press scrutinized a trade of Kopin stock in 2003 where Bush netted at least $798,000; he insisted at the time he did not have "improper information" in making the trade.
He is currently chairman of Singapore-based Singhaiyi, co-chairman of China-based CIIS and chairman of A&A Consulting.
Barbara Bush
Barbara Bush, daughter of former President George W. Bush, took a job at Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, after graduating from Yale University. In 2008, she co-founded Global Health Corps, a heathcare nonprofit. She sits on the nonprofit's board and earned $108,784 in 2017, according to IRS form 1099 provided by Guidestar.
Information compiled by the Fox News research team.