How Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump Have Profited Off Their Dad's Presidency

As House Democrats continue their impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to leverage foreign aid for political favors, among his most ardent defenders, as usual, are Trump’s adult sons Donald Jr. and Eric.
“Why didn’t @JoeBiden recuse himself from dealing with Ukraine?” Don Jr. tweeted recently. “His son was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that had been investigated by the prosecutor who Joe pushed to be fired.” This, Don Jr. argued, created the “appearance of impropriety,” and constituted a “clear conflict of interest.”
Eric was similarly critical of this arrangement in an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show on October 2. Hunter, Biden’s son, “didn’t know anything about the industry he was in,” Eric protested. “He didn’t have any discernible duties, and he’s getting paid $50,000 a month? And then he gets $1.5 billion from China? Laura, it’s insane.”

It is perhaps true that when the vice president is in charge of American foreign policy in Ukraine, his son’s service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company is not a great look. But the Trumps have omitted or misstated key facts en route to their anti-nepotism outrage. Biden joined the international community in calling for the ouster of Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, because Shokin was slow-walking investigations and ignoring the corruption he’d been charged with rooting out. If anything, Biden’s efforts to get rid of Shokin increased the likelihood that the energy company, Burisma Holdings, would face meaningful scrutiny.
The $1.5-billion-from-China talking point, meanwhile, is a wildly-distorted reference to the financial maneuverings of an investment fund called BHR Partners. Hunter Biden served on the fund’s advisory board beginning in 2013, and acquired a ten-percent stake in 2017. A lawyer for Hunter Biden told the Washington Post that his client received no compensation as a BHR board member, and has not seen a return on his investment since becoming an investor.
In 2014, BHR Partners apparently launched an effort to raise $1.5 billion in capital. One of its major shareholders is the state-owned Bank of China. In late 2013, Hunter Biden accompanied his father on a diplomatic trip to China, and they briefly met in a hotel lobby with a BHR investor. Twelve days later, Hunter accepted his unpaid board position, the Post says.
 

Again, this sequence of events is not especially flattering for Hunter Biden, and at the time, according to The New Yorker, White House aides expressed concern that he could be seen as “leveraging access for his benefit.” But in Trumpworld, this string of loosely-associated buzzwords is now enough to sustain a conspiracy theory that the younger Biden has earned “millions.”
Setting aside the alternative facts underlying the Trump kids’ criticisms, however, their decision to wade into this controversy is notable for a different reason: During their father’s tenure as president, Don Jr. and Eric have repeatedly managed to cash in on their newfound positions of political privilege in their business dealings. So, too, have their sister Ivanka and brother-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom hold senior positions in the administration and whose companies and investment portfolios netted them anywhere between $29 million and $135 million last year, per their financial disclosure forms. Here are some of the highlights of when the family's business intertwining with government affairs constituted the “appearance of impropriety” and “conflict of interest.”

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