Hunter Biden sat down on the "Dopey" podcast — an addiction and recovery show hosted by Dave Manheim — and casually explained how he financed a two-month crack binge at the Chateau Marmont, a luxury Hollywood hotel that costs thousands of dollars a night to stay at. The answer? Burisma. The Ukrainian energy company that paid him a reported $50,000 a month while his father was Vice President of the United States.
"I never went broke," Hunter said.
Manheim had asked how Biden managed to "scrape the money together" for drugs and luxury hotel stays during his spiral. Hunter's answer was remarkably specific. "Well, I still had the residual. Like for instance, I still was on the board of Burisma," he said, as though describing a passive income stream from a rental property and not one of the most controversial foreign payments in modern American political history.
Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014 and remained through 2019 — the entire period his father served as Vice President and the period during which Joe Biden famously pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating the company. According to Newsmax, Hunter earned up to $50,000 per month for the position. That's $600,000 a year. For a board seat at a Ukrainian natural gas company in a country where he didn't speak the language and had no energy sector experience.
But Hunter has an explanation for that, too. "What people don't understand about Burisma is that I went on the board of Burisma because I had been on the board of about 14 other major national and international organizations," he told Manheim. He cited his time as vice chairman of Amtrak, chairman of the World Food Program USA, counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner, and a teaching position at Georgetown University.
None of those positions involved Ukrainian energy. And none of those organizations were under investigation by a foreign prosecutor whom the Vice President of the United States then had fired. The 14-board defense answers a question nobody was asking. We didn't wonder if Hunter Biden had ever held a job. We wondered why a Ukrainian oligarch's energy company needed a crack-addicted American lawyer with a very specific last name.
The most revealing line came when Hunter defended his ability to serve despite being, in his own words, completely out of his mind on drugs. "Even when I was a crack addict and out of my mind, I could show up for four meetings a year," he said.
Four meetings a year. At $50,000 a month. That works out to roughly $150,000 per board meeting — assuming he actually attended all four, which, given the admission that he was "out of his mind," is generous.
A federal jury convicted Hunter Biden of three felony gun charges in June 2024. He later pleaded guilty to federal tax charges. In December 2024, President Joe Biden pardoned his son for all federal offenses committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024 — a window that conveniently covers the entire Burisma period, all the tax issues, and the gun conviction in one sweep.
We spent years being told this was all a conspiracy theory. Russian disinformation. A laptop that didn't exist. A board seat that was perfectly normal. An investigation that was already closed. A prosecutor who deserved to be fired. A father who never discussed business with his son.
Now Hunter Biden is on a podcast, relaxed and pardoned, volunteering that Burisma money funded his drug habit and that the gig required four meetings a year he could attend while completely incoherent.
The pardon covers 2014 through 2024. The confession covers everything it doesn't.
