- Joe Biden's aides in 2014 tried to get him to address questions over his son's job at a Ukrainian gas company, but were hampered because of family tragedy, The New York Times reported.
- Hunter Biden's role at Burisma prompted criticism at the time, and has emerged as the primary attack line against Biden in his 2020 campaign for president.
- Current and former Biden and White House aides told the Times that attempts to get Biden to push back in public against criticism were "simply not worth risking a scolding."
- At the time Hunter Biden was struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, and his brother, Beau Biden, was hospitalized with brain cancer. Times sources say this clouded Biden's action.
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Aides to Vice President Joe Biden in 2014 prompted him to confront criticism of Hunter Biden's decision to join a Ukrainian gas company, but were rebuffed because of family tragedy, The New York Times reported.
Hunter Biden's decision to join the board of Burisma Holdings raised questions in the US media given his father's position, and involvement in the conflict between and Russia and Ukraine.
To further complicate Joe Biden's position, at the time Hunter was struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, and his brother, Beau Biden, was hospitalized with brain cancer. He would die around a year later.
Current and former Biden and White House officials told the Times "the vice president's shaky emotional state over Beau's illness and death" were responsible for his imperfect response to the situation, which has come back to haunt his 2020 presidential campaign.
He "was anguished by his son's personal problems and unsure how to help him recover," the Times wrote of Biden's attitude to Hunter, citing an aide who spoke with Biden about the issue.
One told the Times that bringing up anything to do with Hunter Biden was "simply not worth risking a scolding."
Aides were, at one point, so concerned with over the Burisma situation that they asked the State Department for a fact-file on Hunter Biden, the Times said.
In another case George Kent, a State Department official overseeing Ukraine, said he tried to get White House staff to deal with the Hunter Biden question.
He said he was told by an official that Biden lacked the "further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at that time."
The Times cited the example of an October 2014 flight from the US to Ukraine, where he was due to give an anti-corruption speech.
"Several aides recalled a surreal split-screen of activity onboard, as Mr. Biden's team focused mostly on the speech (he urged them to make it tougher), but peeled off for intermittent huddles on how to handle the Hunter story (Mr. Biden dismissed the story as a distraction, and did not engage)."
Biden's aides eventually chose to take the public line that Hunter Biden was a lawyer and private citizen.
"The vice president would not even discuss taking the step that could make all questions vanish: asking his son to quit the Burisma board," the Times wrote.