Hunter Biden was disbarred Monday in Connecticut, following complaints about his conviction on federal gun and tax charges last year.
In an agreement with the state, Hunter Biden consented to being disbarred while admitting attorney misconduct, but he notably did not admit to any criminal wrongdoing.
Judge Patrick Carroll III found that Hunter Biden violated several ethical rules, including engaging in conduct “involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” the Associated Press reported.
Hunter Biden was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1997, a year after graduating from Yale Law School. He was also disbarred in Washington, D.C. earlier this year.
Trending
The 55-year-old was found guilty of three felonies last year for lying about his use of drugs on a 2018 gun application. Hunter Biden had separately been set to stand trial in California in September 2024 on charges that he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes, but he pleaded guilty just hours before jury selection was scheduled to begin.
His father, former President Joe Biden, issued a full and complete pardon before leaving office, arguing that the charges were politically motivated.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” the pardon reads. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Hunter Biden also received scrutiny over his foreign business involvement in Ukraine and China from 2013 to 2018, during which he earned nearly $11 million.
From 2014 to 2019, he served on the board of directors for Ukraine’s largest private natural gas company, Burisma, at the same time his father, then the vice president, took a leading role in U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The New York Times reported in August that Hunter Biden had sought help from the federal government for Burisma while his father served as vice president.
NBC News reported in 2022 that Hunter Biden made $5.8 million from two business deals in China between 2013 and 2018. One of those deals was with billionaire businessman Ye Jianming, who is currently detained by Chinese officials on bribery charges that dismantled the company and triggered a market wipeout.
In his autobiography, “Beautiful Things,” published in 2021, Hunter Biden said the money he earned from Burisma “turned into a major enabler during my steepest skid into addiction” and “hounded me to spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively. Humiliatingly. So I did.”
Hunter Biden, who did not speak during Monday’s disbarment hearing, previously defended his foreign business involvement.
“Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah,” Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News. “But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”
Author
