Talk:Hunter Biden/Archive 2

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Alleged Misinformation

The Wikipedia page excerpt ( below) about Hunter Biden is factually incorrect. The excerpt below may reflect opinion but not fact. Wikipedia is compromised when it is a platform for political views. The truth is told by Joe Biden himself in his own words during a videotaped interview in 2016. He brags on video tape that he forced the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor using the threat of withholding a billion dollar aid package. I put two different links to this videotape but you did not allow them. Look it up yourself by googling Biden bragging Ukraine.

Hunter Biden- Wikipedia excerpt

In 2019, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden had sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect Hunter Biden from investigation.[3][4][5] However, Hunter Biden was not under investigation,[6] and there is no evidence of wrongdoing done by him in Ukraine.[7] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laurel Long (talk • contribs) 19:14, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

What he is saying does not actually contradict what the reliable sources we are relying on are saying. What they are saying is that the claim that Joe Biden sought the dismissal in order to protect Hunter is false. It's as if someone claimed that Napoleon went to Waterloo to see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. You can find plenty of sources that say that Napoleon went to Waterloo, but none of them will stop that claim from being false, as the Star Wars prequels were not even announced until 178 years after his trip to Waterloo. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:53, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Someone is lying to protect the Biden's. It is criminal for people to hide the fact that Joe Biden bragged to the CFR about getting a Ukrainiane prosecutor fired. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nakedtruth (talk • contribs) 04:14, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

• Nakedtruth, the BLP applies to talk pages too, and you may well have already committed a violation. I strongly suggest you be more respectful of the rules. I will leave a few notifications on your talk page to alert you to discretionary sanctions that apply to this article. Drmies (talk) 04:22, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Nakedtruth, Biden bragging about the prosecutor getting fired has nothing to do with his son. At all. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:22, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Biden bragging about the prosecutor getting fired is part of the narrative and it is wrong to keep that part out. Also you are keeping out what Hunter Biden said about himself. There is no justification for that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nakedtruth (talk • contribs) 04:29, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Nakedtruth, Biden bragging about the prosecutor getting fired is part of your narrative, but it's not part of the true story, in which Hunter Biden has still never been accused of wrongdoing. I don't agree with removing what Hunter said about the role when he resigned. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:41, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Muboshgu, you are wrong. Biden's bragging IS part of the story. The page claims Biden didn't brag about stopping any prosecution. That is not true. Biden bragged about getting a prosecutor fired. The prosecutor who got fired was investigating Burisma. The way the page reads it looks like Trump made up the bragging part when that is not at all true. You disagree with removal of what Hunter Biden said about himself? Fine. PUT IT BACK! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nakedtruth (talk • contribs) 04:45, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

This page is a distortion of the facts. Biased and argumentative "facts" are being allowed, and direct quotes from Hunter Biden regarding his work with Burisma are being blocked. Thus the page paints a false narrative that nobody there was nothing questionable about Hunter getting the Burisma job when even Hunter admitted it was likely due to his dad's influence and the page falsely claims Joe Biden didn't brag about stopping any prosecution when he bragged about getting a prosecutor fired. People who try to correct this mis-information are accused of "disruptive editing." Why? That makes no sense. The Hunter Biden page should be removed if facts inconvenient to the Biden's are not allowed on it. Nakedtruth (talk) 04:42, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

• Muboshgu, here is the next one. Isn't that just the most vacuous and irrelevant quote ever? I don't know if I need to alert Geographyinitiative to discretionary sanctions--I thought they were reasonably well informed of our policies, but who knows. Drmies (talk) 04:43, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Drmies, it's a bad quote. I didn't realize it was that bad. I can see why Beau was the son running for political office. We should include what he said though, maybe in a recap format that quotes him barely if at all. On another note, this account hadn't edited since 2014. The name seems familiar. Has there been a similarly named account pop up recently? Do you have any suspicion of coordination?
    • No, I only know them from this, after a revert. But at least they're polite. Drmies (talk) 04:59, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm definitely not 100% sure, but I think it's generally a good idea to get some kind of an idea of his perspective on why he was selected for the job. Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:49, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Geographyinitiative, I agree with you. I just think that quote makes really bad copy and we should try to summarize the quote instead.

Dimes, I only edit when there is a subject that interests me and that hasn't been since 2014. I'm not sure why that matters. I quoted Hunter directly so that you couldn't say I was distorting anything. It's a catch 22. Quote directly "Why are you quoting?" Don't quote directly "That's a distortion." It makes no sense that an article on a public figure that is recently in the news has no reference to a recent interview that he actually did especially when most people hadn't heard of that public figure previously. Also I put in an accurate summary earlier and you, or someone else, took it out. This is the summary. Hunter Biden admitted to ABC News that he likely would not have gotten his job at Burisma if his father had not been the vice president. Nakedtruth (talk) 04:54, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

The problem is, as Muboshgu says, it's a bad quote. It doesn't give any insight at all--it's a leading question that he avoids answering, or maybe that's all he has. So it gives no additional perspective at all. That an article wouldn't have a quote from a recent interview is absolutely normal--we don't really work in quotes, but in verified statements. Drmies (talk) 04:59, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Quote 1 is summed up as "Son of famous man gets job. Suggests that some level of his success will be down to his dads name." This is neither some incredible insight, nor particularly insightful or meaningful, however we can see it is being included here in order to push the narrative that his only reason for being employed was due to the connection with his father, which would then be tied back to the prosecutor, which will then be tied back to the company and Hunter, and the US demand of the firing of a prosecutor protecting the former President and his pro-Russian oligarch friends.

Quote 2 is summed up as "Man involved in public scandal that has unfairly maligned his father is disappointed and regrets being involved only as a result of the scandal itself" but is dressed up as an admittance of guilt / culpability. Hunter is quite clear in his quotes that he refers to the wider situation which is omitted through the direct quote mining, particularly when positioned as it was immediately following Quote 1. Koncorde (talk) 09:42, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Misinformation

I think the editor is splitting hairs regarding this excerpt from Hunter Biden page: “In 2019, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden had sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect Hunter Biden from investigation.”

The fact is Joe Biden on videotape in front of an audience, admitted to and bragged about successfully getting the Ukrainian prosecutor using the threat of withholding a billion dollar aid loan.

The way the excerpt is written makes it sound like President Trump’s “false” claim is completely unfounded and even absurd and that poor Joe Biden is a victim of evil Trump. When in fact Joe Biden is guilty of what Trump is being accused of and impeached about now.

Since it is half accurate as you say, because the reason for Joe Biden’s unethical and possibly illegal coercion to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired is a mystery, then delete this excerpt altogether or write it in a way that is fair and accurate.

Be honest, the anti-Trump political bias is glaring. If there is no proof that Hunter Biden was being investigated then why even mention it at all except to have an excuse to say that Trump made a false accusation? Laurel Long (talk) 06:00, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Editor: “What they are saying is that the claim that Joe Biden sought the dismissal in order to protect Hunter is false. It's as if someone claimed that Napoleon went to Waterloo to see Star Wars..”

So “Napoleon went to Waterloo to see Star Wars..” is false.

Therefore, Napoleon never went to Waterloo?

Really? Laurel Long (talk) 06:57, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

There's no more simple a way to sum up the accusation, or the cause. Biden, in his role with the US, sought the dismissal of a pro-Russia stooge who was refusing to investigate companies associated with his former boss. The suggestion thereof was that there was likely collusion pre-dating the events in Ukraine that saw investigations dropped or suspended conveniently for some politicians and oligarchs directly involved with Russia. Asking for him to be sacked is not the same as asking the president of a country to turn its investigative agencies over to concoct public allegations under duress. Koncorde (talk) 09:42, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

You are making an accusation without factual backup. Biden and his allies CLAIM that he asked for the prosecutor to be fired because he wasn't investigating. But the fact is that the investigation into Burisma stopped AFTER the prosecutor in question was fired. There is no proof that Trump sought an investigation of Biden ot "concoct public allegations." In fact that is provably false. In April 2019, the newspaper TheHill published a story questioning Joe Biden's ethics in regards tot he Ukrainian prosecutor. Trump did not ask for an investigation until several months later. Nakedtruth (talk) 14:43, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Nakedtruth, everything you just wrote is false. Was that Hill piece you're talking about written by John Solomon? – Muboshgu (talk) 14:55, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, per Muboshgu. We know that the Biden situation was long discussed before TheHill piece, and had already had aspersions cast about its fidelity. Meanwhile the start date of the Presidential request is far from "several months" as there is the synchronous removal of the US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, suggested in response to her refusal to toe the party line when it came to manipulating the Ukrainians into doing Trumps dirty work. The Solomon piece is either conveniently coincidental, or part of the narrative building, depending on how much into the conspiracy theory you buy. Koncorde (talk) 15:42, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Muboshgu Wow. If everything I said was "false" then how did you know there The Hill piece was written by John Solomon? I said there was a piece written by The Hill months prior to Trump asking for an investigation. You just proved me correct and proved yourself to be spreading a falsehood. Good job! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nakedtruth (talk • contribs)

I don't believe Muboshgu was disputing the existence of said article, but that your other statements and interpretation of "facts" are wrong. Koncorde (talk) 16:10, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Koncorde, bingo. Nakedtruth, I'm asking if the article from The Hill that you didn't provide a link to was written by John Solomon because we know that he is involved in creating the myth that somehow Hunter and Joe Biden did something wrong.[1] – Muboshgu (talk) 18:57, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

This edit re-inserted a nominally polished version of material that had been removed for good reason, supporting it with The Epoch Times, which is not a reliable source for American politics. I'm already at 1RR for today, so somebody else will have to deal with this. (For that matter, do these two clicks of "undo" on the same day count as a 1RR violation, or does some sub-codicil exception apply?) XOR'easter (talk) 16:02, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

I've made my opinion on the information above.:

Quote 1 is summed up as "Son of famous man gets job. Suggests that some level of his success will be down to his dads name." This is neither some incredible insight, nor particularly insightful or meaningful, however we can see it is being included here in order to push the narrative that his only reason for being employed was due to the connection with his father, which would then be tied back to the prosecutor, which will then be tied back to the company and Hunter, and the US demand of the firing of a prosecutor protecting the former President and his pro-Russian oligarch friends.

Quote 2 is summed up as "Man involved in public scandal that has unfairly maligned his father is disappointed and regrets being involved only as a result of the scandal itself" but is dressed up as an admittance of guilt / culpability. Hunter is quite clear in his quotes that he refers to the wider situation which is omitted through the direct quote mining, particularly when positioned as it was immediately following Quote 1.

The additional sentence introduced undermines the argument being made that he was unqualified which makes it even less notable or significant and still remains largely irrelevant. Koncorde (talk) 16:10, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, somehow it's sound and fury signifying even less. XOR'easter (talk) 16:17, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Koncorde The point I was making about the Hill article is that it was written PRIOR to Trump attempting to investigate Biden. That is a fact. Maybe Trump was "fooled" by The Hill. Or maybe you are fooled by Biden. What we know for a fact is that when Biden sought to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired, that prosecutor was investigating Burisma, Hunter Biden worked for Burisma and Joe Biden knew this. In the very least that is a clear conflict of interest on the part of Joe Biden. Right now THREE current Democratic candidates running for president against Joe Biden have come out and said they would not be okay with their VP's son working for a foreign company. So it's not a "myth" that Joe Biden did anything wrong. That's pretty much accepted fact. It's up for debate as to whether or not he did anything criminal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nakedtruth (talk • contribs) November 2, 2019, 22:58 (UTC)

What you just described is misinformation at minimum, and more likely just disinformation. It sounds like a Hannity transcript.

• "Biden sought to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired" — yes, but why, and on behalf of whom?
• "that prosecutor was investigating Burisma" — except actually not really, which is part of why he was pushed out
• "that is a clear conflict of interest on the part of Joe Biden" — it could have turned out to be a conflict of interest if Hunter or Joe did anything wrong, but in the end there is no evidence they did
• "THREE current Democratic candidates running for president against Joe Biden have come out and said they would not be okay" — well of course they say that, they want to knock Joe out of the box so they can win the nomination, what else would you expect them to say?
• "So it's not a "myth" that Joe Biden did anything wrong. That's pretty much accepted fact." — it's not accepted fact at all. It's an obviously transparent political smear because Trump fears Joe can beat him so he's trying to keep him from winning the nomination. I mean, seriously. This is a complete no-brainer. soibangla (talk) 23:14, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Actually, what is a complete no-brainer is that the editors of this article are making sure the truth is buried, and the result is not a neutral point of view article, but just the typical bias and more whitewashing of wrongdoing by liberal politicians and their families, and more inflammatory, inaccurate language bashing Trump. I respect your opinion, Soibangla, and I understand your anti-Trump point of view, but your opinion is not relevant to how a Wikipedia article should be edited, and the anti-Trump point of view of you and fellow left-leaning editors should not influence an article - Wikipedia articles should be written from a neutral point of view. GlassBones (talk) 04:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• I think maybe someone should take this editor to AN or AE for a topic ban on the topic. Their Joe Biden song is a broken record. Drmies (talk) 23:55, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

You are entering dangerous waters, Nakedtruth. It should be obvious that the editors of Wikipedia are overwhelmingly liberal and will do nearly anything to protect the left-wing bias in all articles about political figures. Tread carefully. GlassBones (talk) 04:34, 7 November 2019 (UTC) — GlassBones (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

"GlassBones", now, huh? If we haven't started an AN/I or SPI case over this talk page yet, we really should. – Muboshgu (talk) 05:27, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

I am the same user previously named BattleshipGray. For some reason I was unable to access that account,but I was able to change my user name. By the way - what are AN/I and SPI?GlassBones (talk) 00:21, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 7 November 2019

Biden and his older brother, Beau, were also seriously injured in that crash.[2] Hunter and Beau Biden later encouraged their father to marry again,[14] and Jill Jacobs became Hunter and Beau's stepmother in 1977.[2] Biden's half-sister, Ashley, was born in 1981.[15] His brother Beau died on 30 May, 2015 at the age of 46. Da Vinci Nanjing (talk) 17:41, 7 November 2019 (UTC) I would like to add the death of his brother with the sentence preceding the source. The death of his brother is not mentioned in the article at all.

References

We do mention this in the article Biden family and in Beau Biden, to which that section refers the reader for further information, but I wouldn't object to mentioning it here as well. It's only a sentence. XOR'easter (talk) 16:57, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. Izno (talk) 17:00, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

already exhaustively discussed, philosophical argument, not a forum soibangla (talk) 23:38, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Hunter Biden Fees at Burisma - Restored as not properly closed Initial discussion I think the article should include the fees earned by Hunter Biden's companies rather than an amount that he drew from one of the companies. The current figure of $ 50k is not his salary but occasional drawings from a partnership bank account. The fees are well referenced and there are fees for both his legal practice and his investment partnership. RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:01, 5 November 2019 (UTC) Even if the reporting on the various fees he's earned is reliable, I'd say that the details of his compensation are probably below the threshold of significance for a general biography. "Lawyer charges billable hours, film at 11." XOR'easter (talk) 16:24, 5 November 2019 (UTC) Why do you think this is noteworthy for his biography? The coverage it's received is mostly relates to insinuations relating to various debunked conspiracy theories about him and his father. SPECIFICO talk 16:33, 5 November 2019 (UTC) Has anyone else noticed how the Straw man use of the term "conspiracy theory" has been muscled up to include the word "debunked"? We're too smart and well educated here to be falling into that type of labeling which immediately blocks critical thinking...the label "communism" was used in such a widespread way back in the 50s and its really sad if we are still as intellectually malleable and mislead into dead ends now as we were then. Besides all that, most of the time the expression does not even apply grammatically; e.g. "A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors". Who are the participants of the alleged "conspiracy" and what is the alleged "conspiracy"? All I've heard alleged is a simple old-fashioned profiteering. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:20, 6 November 2019 (UTC) A conspiracy theory generally is an improbable explanation based on omitted evidence and/or baseless speculation and is often promoted by parties with an interest in denying the mainstream statements of fact. These may circulate widely without being disproved by evidence or exposure of their illogic. The various Ukraine conspiracy theories implicating the Democrats, Crowdstrike, the Bidens, et al proliferated rapidly over the initial weeks of public attention to the scandal. Then the mainstream media caught up with them and began reporting and explaining why they were either nonsense or false. So that's why "debunked conspiracy theory" has entered our discourse. Other conspiracy theories have yet to be debunked, e.g. Jeffrey Epstein is alive and liIving in a tunnel at Disney World. SPECIFICO talk 15:31, 6 November 2019 (UTC) ok, thanks for the detailed explanation. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:05, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Why is there no mention of Hunter Biden's lack of qualifications for the job at Burisma, other than being the son of the US Vice President? Hunter Biden admitted as much. Hunter Biden was asked about his selection for the board of Burisma by a reporter from ABC News who asked, "If your last name wasn't Biden, do you think you would've been asked to be on the board of Burisma?" Hunter replied "I don't know. I don't know. Probably not, in retrospect, But that's -- you know -- I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden." This statement is definitely relevant and should be included in the article. GlassBones (talk) 04:16, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Hunter Biden is a Yale Law attorney and consultant. Many/most people who go to top law schools do so to make top dollar by billing clients at top hourly rates, which explains why America has lots of wealthy attorneys and consultants. Some people have focused on the fact that Hunter was not an energy expert and thus was "unqualified" for the job, while ignoring that he was hired to conduct corporate governance best practices, not to search for oil deposits as a petroleum engineer or geologist. Every company in every industry hires people who are not experts in that company's industry, but they perform other roles to support the company, and many are well-paid for it. Anyone who has ever worked in any significant management role in the corporate world understands this. Corporate governance best practices means creating rules and policies and procedures to run a company properly, and in the case of Burisma, to get rid of corrupt practices so the company could operate by Western standards, as the company sought to do business with Western business partners that would require corporate governance best practices. Maybe try pursuing the line that he couldn't have gotten into Yale Law if not for his father's name. soibangla (talk) 04:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Of course it is OK for large, (maybe corrupt?) foreign natural gas companies to pay the relatives of US politicians 50k or even 80k a month. After all they are really the best and brightest compared to the all the other average students. These smart kids are entitled to take in millions. We also want to encourage foreign companies to have solid relationships and easy contacts with high level important people in the US government (maybe play a little golf to break the tensions, get some deals done). Now that we all agree..lets improve the Hunter Biden page and take out any references to these types of large payments, some uneducated people may get the wrong idea. They think that this might be pay to play because they are very naive about politics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.156.149 (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2019 (UTC) I just checked the article and saw that the sentence explaining that Hunter was hired to conduct corporate governance best practices was removed at some point, so I will restore it tomorrow. soibangla (talk) 05:01, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Soibangla has summarized everthing that needs to be said in response to the initial concern in this thread. Let's move on. SPECIFICO talk 14:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Reopened This discussion was closed with out a consensus vote and has been reinstated. Please do not close without a vote. The amount of the fees and source are important. The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html reported the following. $3.4m to Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC in circa 18 months and $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014 extracts below Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated. Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor. The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement. First, Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board. Around the same time, the company started paying the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where Hunter Biden was working. The firm, which Mr. Biden left at the end of 2017, declined to describe the nature of Boies Schiller’s work for Burisma. But previously unreported financial data from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office show the company paid $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014. Initial payments of over $ 3m are a significant amount and should appear in the article. RonaldDuncan (talk) 18:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC) Wikipedia is not a democracy: it operates on the building of consensus, not voting. The discussion had grown stale. Closing/archiving it was the right move. Revisiting the same tired old argument will not change that. XOR'easter (talk) 18:27, 20 November 2019 (UTC) POV Editing personal attacks, ad nauseam rehash of repeatedly debunked claims soibangla (talk) 00:49, 21 November 2019 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Both MrX and Muboshgu are neoliberal POV editors as evidenced by their improper deletions at Pete Buttigieg as well as here. Obviously, Joe Biden using his muscle, as cited by RealClearPolitics, to fire the man prosecuting Hunter's a worthwhile addition to this article. 172.58.235.234 (talk) 00:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Those two editors are experienced and valued contributors to political topics. Please don’t attack them. Instead cite reliable sources confirming your statements. What is the real clear politics story that should be included here? Mr Ernie (talk) 00:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC) I understand those editors have experience.. This edit, however, is cited by both RealClearPolitics and USAToday + has valuable information for the article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunter_Biden&diff=924853140&oldid=924717619 172.58.235.234 (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Per the instructions at WP:BRD, lets see what consensus forms regarding that text. Mr Ernie (talk) 00:39, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Is it NPOV to say Trump "falsely" ? "President Trump falsely claimed that Biden "walk[ed] out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund.." I mean, really? That seems so CNNish to me. Do you guys/gals really want that kind of OR and OPED wording in this Blp? Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:46, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Nocturnalnow, if something is false, we say that it's false. It's not OR. To me, "CNNish" would be to have one Democrat saying that what Trump said is a lie, and one Republican to say that Trump didn't say what he said. We're doing the opposite of CNN, in fact, by not hedging and employing this false equivalency. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:50, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Would we be saying that Bush "falsely" claimed that Iraq had WMDs? Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:00, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Nocturnalnow, why wouldn't we? They had the conclusion they wanted and they tried to shape the evidence to fit it. But, this is not an article about George W Bush and WMDs. This is an article about a man who has nothing to do with Ukrainian corruption, unless there's something that hasn't come out yet. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:05, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Falsely claimed is, indeed, the neutral choice of wording. The falsity is demonstrable, but we cannot say whether the claim was a deliberate lie or if he believes it himself. Since it's acknowledged that we don't know whether Trump knowingly said something false or whether he believed the statement despite its falsity, why not say he "incorrectly" made the statement? That is factual without accusing him of lying (since we do not know whether he actually lied or honestly believed a false statement). The idea that saying he "falsely claimed" is neutral is absurd and flat out wrong, as it implies that he knew the statement was false when he made it. Instead, it should read "incorrectly claimed," which is true whether he knew the statement was false or not. XOR'easter (talk) 16:38, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Correct. Trump lied (as usual), so we reflect that, as our sources have. - MrX 🖋 16:40, 6 November 2019 (UTC) Well, we don't know for sure that he lies. He could just honestly believe all of the chain emails our racist uncles forward. They get read to him daily on Fox and Friends, Hannity, Tucker, etc. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:56, 6 November 2019 (UTC) The use of the word "falsely" is clumsy and cumbersome before it's an NPOV issue. It's used as a crutch when writing when summarising reliable sources that are reporting on allegations found unreasonable / unfounded. Koncorde (talk) 17:08, 6 November 2019 (UTC) It's a not a point of view. It's a fact. - MrX 🖋 17:13, 6 November 2019 (UTC) ok, I'm feeling more comfortable with the usage of that term now...the discussion persuaded me. Nocturnalnow (talk ) 14:54, 8 November 2019 (UTC) It is ridiculous to state, in the lede, that "In 2019, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden had sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect Hunter Biden from investigation." Using the word "falsely" is inaccurate, at the very least, and is not written from a neutral point of view. Joe Biden himself admitted, indeed bragged, that he sought the dismissal of the Ukranian prosecutor, threatening to withhold payments to Ukraine. This article makes it seem like Hunter's employment by a Ukranian utility was on the up-and-up, and had nothing to do with his father being Vice President of the US. The article does everything possible to ignore and disregard Biden's admission. The point of view is ridiculously biased, to the point of being yet another Trump-bashing article whose editors include the flimsiest evidence against Trump, blown up with inflammatory language, while ignoring all evidence of wrongdoing by a liberal politician.GlassBones (talk) 03:59, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Joe Biden, and the US in general, was asked by the UK government and the entire EU to apply pressure to the Ukraine President to seek the removal of a prosecutor who (by their estimation) was failing to push the anti-corruption cases that they expected to. Neither the UK or the EU had any interest in either Biden legally at this point, and still don't. So part 1 of Trump's narrative is demonstrably false, and has been clarified by numerous sources, Biden did not seek the firing of the prosecutor for his or his sons personal gain. Hunter Biden got a job, possibly as a result of his father's name but he already had his own standing in compliance and corporate governance, for a company that needed to appoint a legitimate board of directors as a result of years of legal problems. This board of directors needed to be palatable to the West, and demonstrate a commitment to anti-corruption. Hunter Biden being appointed therefore makes some degree of sense to Burisma who are trying to look whiter than white. An independent company handing out roles to people related to other powerful people is par for the course. So part 2 is demonstrably false, Hunter Biden did not get the job because his daddy made it happen, instead a company facing sanctions by Western powers and needing to prove their legitimacy appointed a BoD that would appease them. Even the WSJ agrees with this fundamental assessment. The timeline of the Burisma investigation predated the new BoD by 4 years and was centered around a series of individuals described as "pro Russia oligarchs" that had avoided prosecution in their own country, and had their assets frozen in the UK and EU as a result of the suspicions of those states. Seeking a new prosecutor was intended to ensure that these dormant cases would finally be tied up and the evidence provided to NATO allies to enable definitive judgement to take place. At no point was there an investigation of Hunter Biden because the prosecutor wasn't investigating anything, and since then there have been no further cases. So the alleged link between part 1 and part 2 of the Trump narrative is evidently false by the words of both the original prosecutor, his actions, the multiple states seeking action against the former Burisma BoD, and Bidens actions on behalf of those states in seeking his removal. Finally, seeking to exploit political pressure to make a foreign country declare that they are investigating your political rival is intense douchebaggery. To do so by threatening to withhold money sanctioned by Congress, by demanding it take place in public regardless of context or any evidence, and to set up a series of people favourable to your narrative when existing employees refuse to go along with this behaviour is an utterly corrupt way of operating, and has duly shocked a number of countries worldwide to the extent that they have had to openly deny being involved, but corroborating the accusations against Trump. So the motivation behind Trump's false narrative is patently obvious, and there is pretty much not a single independent source that isn't either employed directly by Trump or likely culpable as co-conspirators, that has defended his position. Meanwhile the Republicans have abandoned any pretense of common sense, to the extent that rather than allow Pence to become President they would rather toe the party line with Trump because they have all spent 3 1/2 years terrified of his ability to incite backlash amongst the suddenly Trumpified GOP base. Even if that means supporting him slagging off gold star veterans, or pillorying McCain who the Repubs a few years back where holding up as one of their best and brightest. Koncorde (talk) 10:52, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Falsely claimed: The statement was false. It was stated without evidence or verification. That is the meaning of "falsely claimed". There is no other way to write that. It's analogous to Kerry/Swiftboat, Obama/Birtherism, Hillary/Uranium One, etc. The claim is false. We could reword it to say that "Trump made the false claim" or something even longer and more awkward, but "falsely claimed" conveys the meaning succinctly without belaboring the point. SPECIFICO talk 14:04, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Our role is not to judge the truthfullness of the claim. And Besos's Washington times is not a "truth telling" newspaper. Please use your critical thinking, and stop using term like "false" or "truth", especially when the subject is politics. Trump made a Claim, an opinion, not a scientific demonstration, you should not misuse scientific standard to judge political opinion. Please don't do propaganda, you don't do a favor to anyone, and it's not going to help you win an election. as an alternative use: .... an information that was later discredited by the washing post, the press, .... a *controversial* statement suspicions instead of claim gave is opinion --Ttestbleuu (talk) 19:40, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Ttestbleuu, we're not judging the truthfulness of the claim, the reliable sources have done that for that. Trump makes claims of fact, not opinion. And I agree that the Washington Times is a bad source, but the Washington Post is solid. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:44, 10 November 2019 (UTC) There is no objective reason to take the Washington Post argument as truth, and therefore conclude that the information "is false". First it can be right, second you do not have in off empirical data to judge if the statement is wrong, thirdly you judging "truthfulness" which is giving a value to a claim (which is hardly objective), and finally you judging based on a standard that is too scientifical ( "if it's not true then it's false"), No, actually it can be partially true, and it can be true if you judge with less criticism.--Ttestbleuu (talk) 19:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)s That is why we don't just rely on one source but on the preponderance of reliable sources. The objective facts, as laid out in numerous sources, cannot agree with the claims made by Trump. You cannot claim alternative facts exist, nor is there an alternative way of interpreting the facts in such a way to corroborate Trump's claims. More importantly there are no reliable sources worldwide to do so. Barring Breitbart or Fox, we are down to conspiracy sites and objectively compromised sources for dissent of what the right would like to describe and frame as "opinions". Koncorde (talk) 20:10, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Concerning your quantitative argument: first if there is no qualitative data to prove "falseness" so just don't make any conclusion. Secondly the quantity of contradictory information doesn't prove "falseness" neither, it prove that there is a strong reaction maybe, but it doesn't imply causality, maybe you can claim it is "probably false because of a strong opposition" but that's it. Anything else would be a speculation. Finally I doubt that journalists are qualified to give a correct opinion on politics. And also, I advice you not to take a right/left position if you want to be objective ( and I doubt that your claim on the right is correct ).--Ttestbleuu (talk) 20:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC) No, it is qualitative because we know the facts to support the position of every single reliable source (because as reponsible journalists they provide them, or attribute them). We represent the quantitative, because that is how NPOV is achieved. To quote WP:NPOV "which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". All significance view published by reliable sources make it clear that the accusations against both Bidens have no grounds in reality, most go further to describe he accusations with the clear context of the political hit job that is being attempted. It is not speculation on our part, or on the part of journalists who as a matter of routine go out of their way to fact check their stories to independently verify the subjects that they are writing about. This is called journalism, and it is why reliable sources with strong editorial processes are prized and can be, in large, trusted to report truthfully the whole truth of a given subject. That status as a "reliable source" is much prized. The current attempt to reframe anything critical of the right, or Trump in particular, as "fake news" is a transparent attempt to control narrative and establish a degree of doubt in their ability to report accurately and independently of political influence. That a clutch of individuals are incapable of seeing the NYT and WaPo as anything other than liberal rags shows how firmly entrenched opinions of factual information that disagrees with your own political stance truly are. And do not try and pull the "objective" card. We know this to be true, because it is reported persistently upon and reflected in the tone of responses. I am neither left or right on the American scale, as I am neither American, nor do I subscribe to their political ideologies. Koncorde (talk) 21:00, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Look, I gave arguments explaining why it is unethical to deal with "truthfulness" and I am not interested in a thesis about republicans or democrats or even to eulogize journalism. It has simply no academic value... You can add an information if it's an acceptable information (whashington post, new yorker, ...), but by deciding what is "Truth" and what is "Lies" you are giving a subjective judgment (based on your opinion, or the opinion of someone else it doesn't matter and I explained why before). Finally, about the NPOV rule, it is about citing your references and not about the information itself to be true or not. For example you can cite a journalist and precise that it is "according to him" but it doesn't mean all journalists are right or that their argument is more valuable. Also NPOV require to not only choose the "favorable newspapers". And I suspect a false consensus effect in this issue.--Ttestbleuu (talk) 22:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC) I agree that dogmatism has become epidemic in the USA, and among msm in particular. Nocturnalnow (talk) 02:22, 11 November 2019 (UTC) Amtrak Board service duration The CNN source indicates that "In 2006, President George Bush nominated Hunter to serve on the Amtrak board of directors. He served a five-year term after a unanimous confirmation by the U.S. Senate." and a primary Amtrak source in January 2009 that indicates that, "...Donna McLean was named Vice Chairman, replacing Hunter Biden, who remains as a board member." However, The Vox source indicates, "When his dad became vice president, Hunter left the Amtrak board..." In my reading of the New Yorker source, it indicates that Biden resigned from the board, and it locates this fact in the middle of its 2008 chronology... but it never actually states when the resignation occurred. How to reflect this in the text? --Noren (talk) 04:19, 15 November 2019 (UTC) @Noren: Fixed. He was appointed to a five year term but served about half that before he resigned. Billmckern (talk) 06:59, 15 November 2019 (UTC) Your edit has made that sentence flatly contradict the two references attached to it. As I mentioned above, according to the first attached reference Biden 'served a five-year term', and the second reference mentions no resignation, instead indicating on January 30 that he 'remains as a board member'. --Noren (talk) 13:36, 15 November 2019 (UTC) @Noren: I don't know how to say this any more plainly. if you are elected to the US Senate, you are elected for a six year term. There's nothing that says you WILL serve all six years. You might die or resign, for instance. That's what happened with Hunter Biden. he was appointed to a five year term, but he served only half of it before he resigned. Billmckern (talk) 16:06, 15 November 2019 (UTC) I understood from your first statement what your assertion was, but the source states that he 'served' five years, which has rather a different definition than had it used the verb 'elected'. I also do not know how to say this more clearly, but you seem to want to address a question of WP:Truth which is both irrelevant and not the topic I was attempting to discuss. I was attempting to discuss the disconnect between the meaning of the sentence you edited and the two citations attached to it. I won't quote them a third time, but if you would be so kind as to look at them and point me to where they support the sentence as you edited it? See [2] and [3]. --Noren (talk) 01:50, 16 November 2019 (UTC) I updated the references. Billmckern (talk) 08:50, 16 November 2019 (UTC) The Main Article regarding Hunter Biden. Yet another WP:SPA on a WP:SOAPBOX who doesn't understand that Joe Biden bragged about the firing of a corrupt prosecutor who wasn't investigating Burisma, but thinks that instead the firing is proof that Hunter Biden did something wrong. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:44, 24 November 2019 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Oh me...I was hoping to get through this beautiful fall day without hurting someone's feelings. But no! Well, please convey my regrets to whomever authored the main article regarding Hunter Biden. It appears that same author is the last remaining person over the age of twelve who hasn't had a good laugh witnessing on their favorite device the real life comedy of Joe Biden bragging to a large audience of an act of deep corruption which he, not Hunter, committed. I believe he was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, but don't let me get in the weeds here, or have all the fun here; I will let you look it up, with these hints: it involved The Ukranian justice department, Hunter and over one billion dollars. I had to laugh at your brave assertion that there was no evidence Hunter did anything wrong, when it is his hapless father who famously made public confession of deep corruption on the vice-president's part. Once he is brushed aside by an already horrified-at-the-prospect-of-a-Biden-candidacy Democrat Party, we will then give Hunter his turn on The Wheel of Sodom game show. You really need to get out of that bubble of yours more often, thou gentle author. In all seriousness...you really haven't heard about this? Then think of the whole new world of truth that awaits you once you rededicate you life to the pursuit of that very truth. TheAntiClark (talk) 18:13, 24 November 2019 (UTC) Based on this interpretation of the facts, I assume you would agree Biden should be impeached, amirite? Probably the rot went right to the top? Maybe the deep state was involved? Yes? No? I can see the conflation of a few items there. Congratulations on another one of the most garbled interpretations of events as yet presented, for the 10th time already. Anyway, for extensive reading feel free to listen to or read any (and I mean any) source that isn't Breitbart. And I don't mean MSNBC, or whoever else you might want to consider biased against your assumed position, but try the EU and British intelligence and Ukrainian authorities who were seeking to prosecute the owner of Burisma in coordination with the US Justice Department. A case undermined by the Ukrainian prosecutor who was universally demanded to resign by multiple national agencies, with Biden carrying the biggest stick. Koncorde (talk) 18:39, 24 November 2019 (UTC) Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 22 November 2019 The entire anti-Trump editorializing in this article is shameful. How about some facts and not opinions? 71.14.114.38 (talk) 23:22, 22 November 2019 (UTC)  Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Misleading Sources Single Purpose Account query has been answered SPECIFICO talk 15:40, 22 November 2019 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. For the sake of transparency, why do the sources which supposedly exonerate Biden from any wrongdoing in Ukraine only say "There is no evidence of Biden's wrongdoing" without elaborating further? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden#cite_note-noevidence-5) There is reference to how these things "have been debunked" but no actual sources debunking these claims? The sources that *do* purportedly debunk these claims state that the investigations have been inconclusive/haven't started yet, which is not "debunked." How is citing the same unsubstantiated claim made from other people acceptable proof? Alandieslaughing (talk) 14:59, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Alandieslaughing, the sources say these are "largely debunked". As for the "no evidence of wrongdoing" bit, how does one prove a negative? We report what reliable sources report. "Ukraine's government insists that it has no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden or his father." "Ukraine’s new chief prosecutor said Friday he was unaware of any evidence of wrongdoing by former Vice President Joe Biden’s son" "There is no evidence that the elder Mr. Biden, while serving as vice president, improperly intervened to aid his son." "There's no evidence for Trump's Biden-Ukraine accusations." "There is no credible evidence that Biden’s actions as vice president were intended to help his son, as many Western leaders had called on Ukraine at the time to fire that prosecutor over allegations of corruption. Hunter Biden has not been credibly accused of illegal wrongdoing related to his work with the company; he says he did “nothing wrong at all.” – Muboshgu (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Hunter Biden does not speak Ukrainian The bio does not highlight the ethical conflict also considered that Hunter does not speak Ukrainian yet attended meetings as a Board member and voted on verbal and written discussion in a language that he was not literate in. Joepayne1974 (talk) 21:12, 19 November 2019 (UTC) Joepayne1974, why do you assume that he needed to speak Ukrainian to take part in the board meetings? English is the global language of business. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:19, 19 November 2019 (UTC) The language policy of Ukraine is based in its constitution and is Ukrainian. As such all legal documents are produced in Ukrainian. Please see this wikipedia link. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joepayne1974 (talk • contribs) 01:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC) But they weren't doing law, they were doing business. If they filed legal docs, they'd use Ukrainian. soibangla (talk) 01:12, 20 November 2019 (UTC) personal attacks, ad nauseam rehash of repeatedly debunked claims, closing for second time soibangla (talk) 04:18, 21 November 2019 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Citing a newspaper doesn't make the claim true! SPAs and soapbox SPECIFICO talk 14:26, 21 November 2019 (UTC) The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. Concerning "Trump is a liar": There is no objective reason to take the Washington Post, the new yorker, or any newspaper as ultimate truth, and therefore conclude that the information "is false". First it can be right, second you do not have in off empirical data to judge if the statement is wrong, thirdly you judging "truthfulness" which is giving a value to a claim (which is hardly objective), and finally you judging based on a standard that is too scientific ( "if it's not true then it's false"), No, actually it can be partially true, and it can be true if you judge with less criticism. Our role is not to judge the truthfulness of the claim. Please use your critical thinking, and stop using term like "false" or "truth", especially when the subject is politics. Trump made a Claim, an opinion, not a scientific demonstration, you should not misuse scientific standard to judge political opinion. Please don't do propaganda, you don't do a favor to anyone, and it's not going to help you win an election. --Ttestbleuu (talk) 22:54, 10 November 2019 (UTC) To quote the non-sciency meaning of the word "False: not according with truth or fact; incorrect". The facts do not agree with Trump. The media, as a whole, has reported that the facts do not agree with Trump - not even partially. The weight of his opinion does not overrule the facts, nor does it lend credence to his claims that other people cannot objectively evaluate the facts because they are "political". I am not taking part in the US election as I do not live there. Koncorde (talk) 23:06, 10 November 2019 (UTC) If we decide that there is no such thing as facts, it's gonna be hard to have an encyclopedia. -Nat Gertler (talk) 23:31, 10 November 2019 (UTC) Well if for you people, there is no difference between methodology and philosophy, and if the answer to arguments is ad hominem, well I understand the deadlock very clearly --Ttestbleuu (talk) 02:53, 11 November 2019 (UTC) The wikipedia entry states in its fourth sentence (the second sentence of the second paragraph) that "In 2019, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden had sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect Hunter Biden from investigation." The word "falsely" is opinion when the only way to know whether that was in fact the reason for Joe Biden's request is to know with certainty what was going on in Joe Biden's mind at the time. The used of the word "claimed" in the sentence is already loaded and would seem to indicate a partisan political bias. The use of the word "falsely" to describe the verb "claimed" makes the bias transparent. To compound the problem with this word choice, a person unfamiliar with the situation might conclude that Trump was also making a false statement when he said Biden "sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor" and not that the use of false referred only to Trump's characterization of Joe Biden's reason for the request. There is no need here to dance around whether there was or was not an investigation of Hunter Biden underway, or whether Joe Biden had reason to suspect one was coming -- those are different issues. The problem here is with the obvious bias in the current wording of the sentence as quoted. That bias is further compounded by the use of the language "sought the dismissal" instead of wording it as "demanded the firing," which would be the appropriate characterization based on Biden's own boasting description of what he did, boasts seen in this video of Biden at the Council of Foreign Relations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCSF3reVr10 Jesbeard (talk) 14:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Jes Beard POV Editing Both MrX and Muboshgu are neoliberal POV editors as evidenced by their improper deletions at Pete Buttigieg as well as here. Obviously, Joe Biden using his muscle, as cited by RealClearPolitics, to fire the man prosecuting Hunter's a worthwhile addition to this article. 172.58.235.234 (talk) 00:23, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Those two editors are experienced and valued contributors to political topics. Please don’t attack them. Instead cite reliable sources confirming your statements. What is the real clear politics story that should be included here? Mr Ernie (talk) 00:29, 21 November 2019 (UTC) I understand those editors have experience.. This edit, however, is cited by both RealClearPolitics and USAToday + has valuable information for the article https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hunter_Biden&diff=924853140&oldid=924717619 172.58.235.234 (talk) 00:36, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Per the instructions at WP:BRD, lets see what consensus forms regarding that text. Mr Ernie (talk) 00:39, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Not that it really matters, but I am no neoliberal. I revert vandalism committed on pages of Republicans and Democrats. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:06, 21 November 2019 (UTC) Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 21 November 2019 Might be relevant to the article on Hunter Biden: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/20/politics/hunter-biden-dna-test/index.html Regards Alain Alainlambert (talk) 18:04, 21 November 2019 (UTC)  Already done – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC) conspiracy Does anyone know the original start of the Biden-Burisma conspiracy theory? Did it really start with Trump and Rudy, or somewhere else? Gah4 (talk) 08:10, 22 November 2019 (UTC) @Gah4: - According this article in the New Yorker, Breitbart editor and Clinton Cash faker Peter Schweizer made it up in his 2018 book of phony stories, Secret Empires. After that, Rudy Giuliani started trying to get people in Ukraine to fabricate information that would attest to Schweizer's accuracy and feeding false stories to John Solomon at The Hill, who wrote several articles that are now under scrutiny because of their inaccuracy. Billmckern (talk) 08:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Thanks. Should this be in the article? Gah4 (talk) 11:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Gah4: Link you put to New Yorker magazine article doesn't work. The URL in your box works, although your link does not: It is https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-invention-of-the-conspiracy-theory-on-biden-and-ukraine This may not be the locus classicus, and this article makes no mention of the recording (actually a video but Trump used thw wrd recording) that Alexander Vindman says Donald Trump referenced in the July 25, 2019 conversation right before the transcript has Trump saying, after an ellipsis, "It sounds horrible to me". That is Joe Biden's appearance in front of the Council on Foreign Relations on January 23, 2018: https://www.cfr.org/event/foreign-affairs-issue-launch-former-vice-president-joe-biden If you scroll down, or search to the first mention of Donbass, Joe Biden says: I think the Donbas has potential to be able to be solved, but it takes two things. One of those things is missing now. And that is I’m desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kiev in terms of corruption. They made—I mean, I’ll give you one concrete example. I was—not I, but it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t. So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time. At some point that became the key piece of "evidence." We ought to try to find out who first floated that. In the July 25, 2019 telephone conversation with Zelensky, Donald Trump incorrectly states that Biden boasted of stopping "the prosecution" when actually he merely boasted of getting the prosecutor fired. Nor did he really claim it was at his own initiative even though he seems to say he decided on his own to stop an announcement of a $1.5 billion loan guarantee. This is a story that, incidently, probably has holes in it but hasn't been looked into. It is highly improbable that an announcement of the loan guarantee was going to made before Prosecutor Viktor Shokin left his office until Joe Biden intervened and stopped it, even though he was not the president. Nor was it Biden's 12th or 13th visit. He made a total of six according to George Kent's testimony, and all sources agree that the one previous to Shokin leaving office in March, 2016 was made in Deceember 2015. And the loan guarantee was not authorized until early June, after a package of U.S. backed anti-corruption legislation had passed, and Biden was not in Kiev at that time. I don't know any way to interpret it that would have Joe Biden telling the truth here. If it was the truth, Joe Biden could destroy the story right away, but he can't because he almost certainly made the entire story up. Sammy Finkelman (talk) 17:31, 22 November 2019 (UTC) What prosecution? The article says that Donald Trump told Ukraianisn president Volodymyr Zelensky that "[Joe] Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution" of his son. Source is here (and should be in the article) https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf "The other thing: There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me." Note: Alexander Vindman says that Trump referenced a "recording", in the lost words just before the words "It sounds horrible to me." Vindman seems to have known this was a video, because, during his public testimony, he stopped himself from saying video. This is, again, almost certainly areference to the January 23, 2018 appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations. It is not at all clear that Trump meant a prosecution of Biden's son, nor would it very logically be a prosecution of Hunter Biden. More logically it would be a prosecution of the company he was entangled with. But all investigations into Burisma had been stopped or stalled long before the preosecutor left. Of course Biden did not boast, in a recorded speech in front of an audience (!) of stopping the prosecution. He did boast of playing a crucial role in getting the prosecutor fired. That it was to stop a prosecution is somebody's spin. We don't have who originated that. It is not at all clear that Trump got told this was a public speech put on the Internet by the oranziation to which he gave the speech. Article needs to clarify that the allegation isn't that Hunter Biden was at risk of being prosecuted in 2016. Of course there may be different versions of the allegation. Sammy Finkelman (talk) 17:44, 22 November 2019 (UTC) Personal life - relationship timeline is incorrect The article currently states "in 2016 he began dating Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother, Beau; they ended their relationship by early 2019". This is incorrect. In the often cited New Yorker article he clearly says that they had split up by the end of 2017 and that he moved to Los Angeles (alone) in early 2018. Annamariaanders (talk) 11:34, 23 November 2019 (UTC) I corrected it, but the source is vague on when they split, so I wrote "late 2017 or early 2018". - MrX 🖋 12:41, 23 November 2019 (UTC) References Please do not revert edit! The introduction, which should summarize and be strictly NPOV, should not contain polemic or advocacy, sourced or not. Controversy should come in the timeline below, in the proper sequence. Placing it in the introduction is promoting it, violating NPOV policy. Not asking you to delete it, just move it to the appropriate section. Please be aware of the 3-revert rule. — J M Rice (talk) 16:17, 24 November 2019 (UTC) Trump's claims are key to the subject's degree of notability, which is far beyond the typical VP's son. To point them out is neither polemic nor advocacy, but a responsible part of introducing the topic. Please be aware of the one-revert rule that is applicable to this page, per the top of this talk page. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:41, 24 November 2019 (UTC) J M Rice, this page is under WP:1RR restriction and you violated it. If you do so again, I will block you. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:50, 24 November 2019 (UTC) The material in the lead makes it more NPOV, not less, because of the extent of coverage about Biden's alleged role in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. - MrX 🖋 17:39, 24 November 2019 (UTC) Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 24 November 2019 The article incorrectly states that President Trump falsely accused Joe Biden of seeking to have Ukraine's prosecutor removed as a means to protect Hunter Biden. The entire entry is, therefore, nothing but political propaganda, not factual, because (as many have seen) Joe Biden, himself, bragged how he forced the prosecutor's removal by threatening to withhold 1.2 billion dollars of aid. It is disturbing to think that an encyclopedia-like data source is presenting misinformation as facts. The article is rife with other similar presumptions. You can not drag fact from media presented material if they have not, in fact, presented any facts. I am ashamed to have ever used Wikipedia with thoughts of it being legit. 64.184.138.202 (talk) 20:29, 24 November 2019 (UTC)  Not done - This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y". - MrX 🖋 20:47, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 25 November 2019

Another SPA Biden bash edit request, answered SPECIFICO talk 13:26, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
In 2019, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden had sought the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to protect Hunter Biden from investigation.[2][3][4] However, Hunter Biden was not under investigation,[5] and there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by him in Ukraine.[6] my request to reflect that in the impeachment hearing of Donald Trump many witness testified that the Obama admin was worried of issues with Biden son working on this board and then VP Biden ADMITTED to withholding AID unless the Ukraine government FIRED the prosecutor. the following video link is proof of biden extorting Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrpXyXKZUR4&fbclid=IwAR1720YqkqSflPqNANPEpb2691oNbK7H7NAMamRHLLiHSVVoby2X3cfpGh02600:1702:2E10:1420:B0D1:3AA2:37DA:C76D (talk) 04:46, 25 November 2019 (UTC) 2600:1702:2E10:1420:B0D1:3AA2:37DA:C76D (talk) 04:46, 25 November 2019 (UTC) So we are to take the word of a witness when it suits, and then conflate it with a completely separate issue while also ignoring all the testimony that directly contradicts this same assertion? Joe Biden, at the behest of the US Government policy, Justice Department, the British Government, and the EU, was instructed to ensure that a prosecutor that had failed to prosecute a series of cases, but in particular had enabled money that was frozen to be released as a result of suspected bribery within the Prosecutors office (see Dmytro Firtash and Viktor Shokin, in addition to raiding Anti-Corruption activists organisations in the Ukraine. There are innumerable sources that cover the situation at length including those witnesses that testified during this impeachment process and were present at that time. Koncorde (talk) 10:41, 25 November 2019 (UTC)  Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. DannyS712 (talk) 12:05, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 27 November 2019

Zach Schneider 20:04, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

 Note: Article content removed from talk page ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 20:16, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Please do not copy article content to the talk page and make your changes as we cannot see what changes were made. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 20:16, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

DNA test

An editor just put in that a DNA test shows that the child in question in the current suit is Hunter's. However, that is just something asserted at this point by the plaintiff in the suit; we cannot treat claims made in a suit filing as simply being true; it is not a reliable third-party source. Despite the headline, the news article posits it correctly as a filing rather than as a truth. --Nat Gertler (talk) 00:15, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Grammatical Correction

Under Burisma Holdings header, sloppy language should be cleared up thus: In place of Shokin in May 2019, should be In May 2019, Shokin Tracymacl (talk) 14:54, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Parlez-vous français?

I got this message on my talk page, and I'm presenting it here for the wider community:

Hi, while reading the French Wikipedia Hunter Biden page I was astonished by the quality of it, it is a copy-paste of GOP and FOX talking points only referencing damaging private details (cocaïne, prostitues, adultery...) why also promoting debunked conspiracy theories. I tried to modify the page, first I deleted all which was maybe excessive, but then I only tried to translate the English Wikipedia page, which is more neutral into French. Even that was blocked though. I referenced all this on the discussion page but got no response except blocking attempts by russian trolls. I was told to contact the french page owners, but seeing all what was referenced and biased on it, I truly have little trust in them. Could some redacters from the English Hunter Page wage on this with French-speaking Wikipedia administrators, as the differences of quality on information on English and french page are appalling, it's like two opposing stories. And it is really unacceptable what is currently printed on the french page, it's not neutral, full of debunked lies or not relevant. ty for any help to restore some dignity or truth... --User:Nicolas.eisbar (talk) 10:40, 5 December 2019 (UTC) (reply)

Does anybody here have a passing knowledge of French? – Muboshgu (talk) 16:18, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes - but I do not want to get into a debate like here in French - and I think I may be damaging any reputation for NPOV :) RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:24, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Ok Nicolas.eisbar I agree with you. The French page is horrible. I generally agree with almost all the English page, and have ongoing debates about a couple of points. I would hope that in France the debate will be less emotional since it is about US politics rather than French. RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:33, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I think the French user made a mistake in wholesale deleting content. As a result he was reverted by a more experienced user for failing to cite / reference his changes. Given the low number of users (comparatively) for French wikipedia it's not surprising things accrue like this without oversight. Unfortunately my French, passable though it is, would not make me confident to contribute. Koncorde (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I've only a passing knowledge as well, sadly. But perhaps editors on the French WP can be directed here and convinced to try a translation. XOR'easter (talk) 19:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Child

According to CNN, After having denied in a previous court filing that he had fathered a child with an Arkansas woman, Hunter Biden was found to be the biological father of the child on the 21th of november. The child was born in August 2018, which would place conception during the period in which Biden was already in a relationship Could this information be placed in the 'Personal life"-section of the article please? Thanks in advance.213.34.49.36 (talk) 13:26, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

 DoneTerrorist96 (talk) 14:45, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

The CNN and Business Insider items are really just regurgitating the brief blurb from yesterday without doing additional reporting; I wouldn't say they add value, but I'll leave that for somebody else to act on if they so choose. XOR'easter (talk) 14:58, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Saying he was "found" is misleading, as all the claims come from papers filed by the suing party. It's not a court ruling nor a non-biased source. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Text, personal life section, says 4 children but infobox says 3. Geo8rge (talk) 14:00, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

A fourth is claimed but has not yet been legally established/recognized as his. Let's wait for some outcome. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:11, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Mother has been named (Luden Alexis Roberts) and photographs of court document published. Source may be suspect. (talk) 01:04, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

See WP:DAILYMAIL. Source is deprecated. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:08, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. MaynardClark (talk) 01:11, 2 December 2019 (UTC) Note Daily Beast as another source, where its reporters are often included on panels of major TV news programs (Washington Week on PBS, etc.). MaynardClark (talk) 01:11, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Update number of children to 4

Currently set as 3. Biden made a court filing on 30 November that he is not contesting that he is the father of the child in the ongoing lawsuit after DNA testing established he is the parent. So number should be increased to 4.RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:56, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

RonaldDuncan, you have sourced that to [4], which says Hunter Biden "is not expected to challenge the results of the DNA test or the testing process." That's not the same as saying he is the father - we'll need a source that actually says that. – bradv🍁 16:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

RonaldDuncan, thank you for self-reverting the number of children, but you still left in the sentence Biden is not contesting the paternity of a child born in August 2018 in an ongoing lawsuit, despite the source saying "not expected to contest". These edits are jumping the gun - the previous version, A lawsuit filed by an Arkansas woman asserts that Hunter is the father of her child, who was born in 2018 was more accurate according to the source. – bradv🍁 16:10, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks @Bradv: If it is sourced to https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/dec/04/judge-in-paternity-case-says-yield-file/ where is says "A separate motion filed with the clerk Wednesday said Hunter Biden "is not contesting paternity."

There is a copy of the court filing at https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/11/30/03/21638658-7740665-Any_such_disclosures_Biden_s_attorneys_claim_would_cause_their_c-m-24_1575082965933.jpg It is point 8. The Daily Mail is not a reliable source so I did not reference their article which refers to the filing. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7740665/Hunter-Biden-requests-Protective-Order-seal-financial-records-amid-child-support-suit.html

Let me know if thats OK RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

RonaldDuncan, WP:DAILYMAIL is deprecated, and for good reason. Arkansas Democrat Gazette is reliable though. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

AGREED :) - Thats why I used other sources for the article. RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Article update - I removed the out of date references (CNN etc) and just left in the arkansasonline ref with the line A separate motion filed with the clerk Wednesday said Hunter Biden "is not contesting paternity." RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The most, if anything, we should say about this is that he was sued for paternity. Anything beyond that would be WP:UNDUE. Wikipedia is WP:NOTNEWS.- MrX 🖋 17:01, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposed consensus

First apologies for confusing things by opening the 3-4 child topic. There were multiple edits/reverts and I self reverted the 3 > 4 child change and opened up the discussion with a new section at the bottom of the page. Missing the first section which was already discussing the topic.RonaldDuncan (talk) 11:37, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It looks like the Child topic had reached a consensus around mentioning the court case, and updating when there was a ruling. I found an accepted source that Biden had filed to the court that he was no longer contesting Paternity, and updated with this info along with further info from the case about debts and unemployment. I think the consensus is to mention the current state of the case with regard to paternity. MrX objected to I think the debts and unemployment (separate discussion) and removed the entire section. A separate point is that the article did not have the name of the mother, since she wants to keep the baby's name anonymous and I think the article should respect this and refer to her as the lady from Arkansas.RonaldDuncan (talk) 11:37, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Put current position of paternity case into article. Suggest that number of Children is updated when Judge finds on paternity (this was previously suggested )RonaldDuncan (talk) 14:03, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Mr. Duncan, please review the page sanctions on this article, 1RR and "Consensus Required" and check whether your recent activity conforms. If not, please roll back to make it conforming. Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 14:22, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It's also utter tripe what is being added. At best it requires a sentence "Biden has four children. In 2019 he went to court to establish bla bla bla" but Ronald seems to want to go with subtle and unsubtle gossip. I am generously assuming that he is not doing so in order to portray Hunter as some kind of doley waster avoiding paying alimony. Koncorde (talk) 14:42, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 11 December 2019

Biden's illegal business dealings in Ukraine have not been debunked contrary to claims in this reading. 2603:900B:A14:D500:CC4D:5613:B480:CDB0 (talk) 02:12, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

That is not an edit request. If you want to make one, you'll need proposed text and you will need a reliable source reference. SPECIFICO talk 02:14, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Unemployed since May 2019

An edit to put in that Biden has been unemployed since 2019 was reverted on the basis that it was WP:BLPGOSSIP the text of the policy is clear.

Avoid repeating gossip. Ask yourself whether the source is reliable; whether the material is being presented as true; and whether, even if true, it is relevant to a disinterested article about the subject. Be wary of relying on sources that use weasel words and that attribute material to anonymous sources. Also beware of circular reporting, in which material in a Wikipedia article gets picked up by a source, which is later cited in the Wikipedia article to support the original edit.

• On November 30 Biden made a sworn court filing stating that he was unemployed since May 2019 this is the primary source and is easily checked since a number of outlets have printed copies of the filing so in terms of true this is WP:VERIFY.
• Is the source reliable there are a large number of WP:RS that have covered this. Google hunter biden unemployed may 2019 - lots of reliable sources.
• Is it relevant to a disinterested article. This is a BLP with a section on career so a 7+months period of unemployment is clearly part of the subject matter of the article.
• There are no weasel words, no anonymous sources and no circular reporting.

So in my view no WP:BLPGOSSIP and the edit should stand. RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:06, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It's probably true, but so what? The "large number of WP:RS that have covered this" are just echoing the original report; the Internet amplifies noise, endlessly. Who has actually made a case that this factoid is of importance for understanding anything? What establishes the relevance? Sorry, but it still reads like gossip to me. XOR'easter (talk) 15:17, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Disagree and it's exactly this kind of crap BLPGOSSIP is there is deal with. No being "unemployed" for 7 months out of his 20+ year career is ridiculous navel gazing at best. When reviewed in retrospect, it is ridiculous to believe that when assessing Hunter Bidens career that in context of his career having no income for 7 months so far will be of particular significance. Koncorde (talk) 15:26, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I'd be cautious about accepting that he has had no income, as it's a statement made in a situation where "spin" of his circumstances can be expected. If someone is suing you for paternity support, you want to sound as poor as possible, I reckon. So in this instance, Hunter may be an unreliable source. --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I would agree, but his legal team were clear no earnings from employment - silent on his "other" earnings :) RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:13, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Many people take considerable breaks during their careers to enjoy the fruits of their labors. This is a whole buncha nuthin'. Leave it out. soibangla (talk) 18:12, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Looks like consensus is the leave it out and close this topicRonaldDuncan (talk) 16:13, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Hunter Biden Fees at Burisma - Restored as not properly closed

Initial discussion

I think the article should include the fees earned by Hunter Biden's companies rather than an amount that he drew from one of the companies. The current figure of $ 50k is not his salary but occasional drawings from a partnership bank account. The fees are well referenced and there are fees for both his legal practice and his investment partnership. RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:01, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Even if the reporting on the various fees he's earned is reliable, I'd say that the details of his compensation are probably below the threshold of significance for a general biography. "Lawyer charges billable hours, film at 11." XOR'easter (talk) 16:24, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Why do you think this is noteworthy for his biography? The coverage it's received is mostly relates to insinuations relating to various debunked conspiracy theories about him and his father. SPECIFICO talk 16:33, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Has anyone else noticed how the Straw man use of the term "conspiracy theory" has been muscled up to include the word "debunked"? We're too smart and well educated here to be falling into that type of labeling which immediately blocks critical thinking...the label "communism" was used in such a widespread way back in the 50s and its really sad if we are still as intellectually malleable and mislead into dead ends now as we were then.

Besides all that, most of the time the expression does not even apply grammatically; e.g. "A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors". Who are the participants of the alleged "conspiracy" and what is the alleged "conspiracy"? All I've heard alleged is a simple old-fashioned profiteering. Nocturnalnow (talk) 15:20, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

A conspiracy theory generally is an improbable explanation based on omitted evidence and/or baseless speculation and is often promoted by parties with an interest in denying the mainstream statements of fact. These may circulate widely without being disproved by evidence or exposure of their illogic. The various Ukraine conspiracy theories implicating the Democrats, Crowdstrike, the Bidens, et al proliferated rapidly over the initial weeks of public attention to the scandal. Then the mainstream media caught up with them and began reporting and explaining why they were either nonsense or false. So that's why "debunked conspiracy theory" has entered our discourse. Other conspiracy theories have yet to be debunked, e.g. Jeffrey Epstein is alive and liIving in a tunnel at Disney World. SPECIFICO talk 15:31, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

ok, thanks for the detailed explanation. Nocturnalnow (talk) 16:05, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Why is there no mention of Hunter Biden's lack of qualifications for the job at Burisma, other than being the son of the US Vice President? Hunter Biden admitted as much. Hunter Biden was asked about his selection for the board of Burisma by a reporter from ABC News who asked, "If your last name wasn't Biden, do you think you would've been asked to be on the board of Burisma?" Hunter replied "I don't know. I don't know. Probably not, in retrospect, But that's -- you know -- I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden." This statement is definitely relevant and should be included in the article. GlassBones (talk) 04:16, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Hunter Biden is a Yale Law attorney and consultant. Many/most people who go to top law schools do so to make top dollar by billing clients at top hourly rates, which explains why America has lots of wealthy attorneys and consultants. Some people have focused on the fact that Hunter was not an energy expert and thus was "unqualified" for the job, while ignoring that he was hired to conduct corporate governance best practices, not to search for oil deposits as a petroleum engineer or geologist. Every company in every industry hires people who are not experts in that company's industry, but they perform other roles to support the company, and many are well-paid for it. Anyone who has ever worked in any significant management role in the corporate world understands this. Corporate governance best practices means creating rules and policies and procedures to run a company properly, and in the case of Burisma, to get rid of corrupt practices so the company could operate by Western standards, as the company sought to do business with Western business partners that would require corporate governance best practices. Maybe try pursuing the line that he couldn't have gotten into Yale Law if not for his father's name. soibangla (talk) 04:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Of course it is OK for large, (maybe corrupt?) foreign natural gas companies to pay the relatives of US politicians 50k or even 80k a month. After all they are really the best and brightest compared to the all the other average students. These smart kids are entitled to take in millions. We also want to encourage foreign companies to have solid relationships and easy contacts with high level important people in the US government (maybe play a little golf to break the tensions, get some deals done). Now that we all agree..lets improve the Hunter Biden page and take out any references to these types of large payments, some uneducated people may get the wrong idea. They think that this might be pay to play because they are very naive about politics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.156.149 (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I just checked the article and saw that the sentence explaining that Hunter was hired to conduct corporate governance best practices was removed at some point, so I will restore it tomorrow. soibangla (talk) 05:01, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Soibangla has summarized everthing that needs to be said in response to the initial concern in this thread. Let's move on. SPECIFICO talk 14:07, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Reopened

This discussion was closed with out a consensus vote and has been reinstated. Please do not close without a vote.

The amount of the fees and source are important. The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html reported the following. $3.4m to Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC in circa 18 months and $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014 extracts below

Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated. Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor. The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

First, Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board. Around the same time, the company started paying the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where Hunter Biden was working. The firm, which Mr. Biden left at the end of 2017, declined to describe the nature of Boies Schiller’s work for Burisma. But previously unreported financial data from the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office show the company paid $283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014.

Initial payments of over $ 3m are a significant amount and should appear in the article. RonaldDuncan (talk) 18:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy: it operates on the building of consensus, not voting. The discussion had grown stale. Closing/archiving it was the right move. Revisiting the same tired old argument will not change that. XOR'easter (talk) 18:27, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Agreed Wikipedia is not a democracy: it operates on the building of consensus, not voting. We should build consensus, not shut down debate by putting a hat template on to hide the discussion, or archiving it the next day after it is reopened.RonaldDuncan (talk) 17:03, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The suggestion was that since the amount that Hunter Biden was paid (over $ 3m ) is relevant to the article, well sourced and editors could say if they agreed that it was relevant or not to the article. NOT just delete the discussion.RonaldDuncan (talk) 17:03, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The discussion wasn't "deleted", it was archived because it's not going anywhere. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:08, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

And it still isn't going anywhere. XOR'easter (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Can anyone point to an objective pay scale that defines when it becomes relevant? I mean, if he'd earned $30m would that have been better or worse, and by what factor? Is it a simple sliding scale? Is there a threshold under which it wouldn't be relevant? Koncorde (talk) 17:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Maybe the more important question is: would his income as a Yale Law attorney and consultant providing high-level corporate consulting services be relevant if he wasn't currently the target of a political smear? soibangla (talk) 19:08, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

One could just as easily frame the question as: would his income as the son of the Vice President providing services not in his expertise be relevant if his father wasn’t the point man for US policy on Ukraine? It’s a little more nuanced than that and many RS have pointed out the salary. Mr Ernie (talk) 03:01, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Mr Ernie: providing services not in his expertise — what do you understand those to be? soibangla (talk) 03:08, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Previously on HunterTalk...

Hunter Biden is a Yale Law attorney and consultant. Many/most people who go to top law schools do so to make top dollar by billing clients at top hourly rates, which explains why America has lots of wealthy attorneys and consultants. Some people have focused on the fact that Hunter was not an energy expert and thus was "unqualified" for the job, while ignoring that he was hired to conduct corporate governance best practices, not to search for oil deposits as a petroleum engineer or geologist. Every company in every industry hires people who are not experts in that company's industry, but they perform other roles to support the company, and many are well-paid for it. Anyone who has ever worked in any significant management role in the corporate world understands this. Corporate governance best practices means creating rules and policies and procedures to run a company properly, and in the case of Burisma, to get rid of corrupt practices so the company could operate by Western standards, as the company sought to do business with Western business partners that would require corporate governance best practices.

Why are we still debating this? soibangla (talk) 03:23, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Soibangla: We are debating this because anyone that knows anything about corporate governance best practices would know that Biden as a politically connected person would not be eligible for a quoted company board in relation to Ukraine. Corporate Governance 101 you look at board members. Biden being ejected from the Navy for cocaine, Biden has a track record of personal scandals, Biden being the son of the VP responsible for Ukraine all of this is at big NO from a corporate governance stand point. Non Executive directors must have a clean back history, track record and have no Conflicts of interest. Biden fails all of these and his appointment is evidence of a failure of corporate governance.RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:10, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I suspect you don't know how Corporate Governance works as you seem to be just repeating prior talking points but wedging "as anyone should know" before it like an argument from authority. His cocaine use, or not, is irrelevant (plenty of criminals are board members). His "scandals" exist only in retrospect and only very loosely could be considered scandals (and are constructed around alleged CoI without any evidence of how he would have a CoI) and there's nothing about CoI in corporate governance other than in reference to ensuring that the risk is managed (and is usually reserved for d vision making). The biggest CoI at Burisma was if Zlochevsky remained as both Chairman and CEO of a gerrymandered board, in which case it wouldn't matter who the selected individuals were as their power would be incredibly limited. The perception of a CoI is from I can tell a concern about nepotism. Koncorde (talk) 15:58, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Koncorde: The first thing on taking on a new director is due diligence on the potential board member and a public record of drug dependency, etc, etc is a big red flag. Clearly Burisma is owned and controlled by Zlochevsky so any Corporate Governance exercise is a form of whitewash. The point is that Biden joining the board is bad Corporate Governance even though that is the excuse used to justify his fees. Chris Heinz knew it was toxic and withdrew from the Rosemont Seneca partnership even though it was his families trust. It is obvious that Zlochevsky was giving himself political cover with the board after the change of government, and "Corporate Governance" was Biden's excuse for the appointment rather than the reason.RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:52, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@RonaldDuncan: Payments to a company are not the same thing as personal compensation. What is the proposed edit here? It seems like the most we could write is "that Rosemont Seneca Bohai made regular payments to Mr. Biden that totaled as much as $50,000 in some months", but that's pretty vague and uninteresting. - MrX 🖋 19:21, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Payments are the fees earned by the partner. Drawings are the amounts taken out (<50K). His personal earnings are the fees not the drawings.RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:10, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

and, as Soibangla points out, utterly unremarkable. Top school corporate attorneys are highly compensated. Maybe we should investigate corruption among Ivy League law schools whose grads end up representing well-funded corporate interests? SPECIFICO talk 19:31, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

@MrX: @SPECIFICO:I would suggest something like "The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office recorded that Biden's legal company Boies Schiller Flexner received compensation of $283,000 in 2014"-NYT for the funds received by Boies Shiller Flexner. This is a large fee for a private company to pay out, and clearly related to Biden. The company is not listing on a stock exchange or doing anything other than a whitewash of its reputation.

And "Biden's partnership Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC received $3.4 from April 2014 to late 2015"-NYT to show how much his personal partnership was paid in the period. Anyway my view is that the article should reflect the known facts about payments since it is a controversial article.RonaldDuncan (talk) 14:57, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Explains what is controversial about being paid money? Nobody would dispute, I don't think, he has been paid - the question is the significance of the payment. It seems the only reason to include it is because it is related to something to do with an alleged impropriety? Koncorde (talk) 15:41, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

That's your Original Research RE: "large amount of money" and it's also kind of ridiculous to suggest that Boies Shiller Flexner is in on something or other. Time to drop the stick. Somebody should close this. (again). SPECIFICO talk 15:45, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

$ 3.4 + $ 0.28 is $ 3.68m in the first circa 18 months. That is a large amount for a Private Company to pay out. Anyway the article should be neutral and present the information. It is not my Original research it is in the NYT article that is already quoted for the drawings of up to $50k per month. RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:44, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not understanding why we would include the 2014 transaction with a law firm that has annual revenues of $420,000,000 and that employs 320 attorneys. This is literally 0.06% of their business and has little-to-nothing to do with Biden as far as I can tell.- MrX 🖋 16:03, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Boies Schiller Flexner is a major law firm, it only took on Burisma as a client because of Biden, the fees will be part of Biden's income from the firm. RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:45, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Source for "it only took on Burisma as a client because of Biden"?

Biden's lawyers statement on Medium (it is a pro Biden as possible :) ) https://medium.com/@george.mesires/a-statement-on-behalf-of-hunter-biden-dated-october-13-2019-d80bc11087ab RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

That's not a reliable source. - MrX 🖋 16:23, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I completely agree :) RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:33, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Source for "the fees will be part of Biden's income from the firm"? - MrX 🖋 16:03, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Law firms pay people based on the income they bring in, so assumption based on standard practice. Anyway the point is that his law firm was paid for work that he wanted carried out, and this should be mentioned in the article. RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:14, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

That's not a source. That's your original research. - MrX 🖋 16:23, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I checked up on US legal salaries and they top out at around $ 250k 10year+ at large firm https://www.ilrg.com/employment/salaries/ so earning over $ 3.5m is significant RonaldDuncan (talk) 17:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

"National average". And this would be the definition of Original Research, and / or WP:SYNTH if we attempted to conflate a national average Vs payments made. Your inclusion requires a reliable source to effectively state "the amount paid is significantly above the norm and a concern". We cannot try by public opinion. Koncorde (talk) 17:58, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@RonaldDuncan: Please familiarize yourself with our basic content policies and guidelines before you dive into the deep end. Other editors should not have to waste their time explaining WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:NOR every time you think you have found a new angle for inserting your POV into the article. - MrX 🖋 18:58, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@MrX: WP:RS WP:V - The source of the fees is the NYT article that is already referenced for the "upto $ 50k per month", which means there is WP:NOR required to put the $ 3.4m and $ 283k into the article. The question and judgement for editors to make is do these changes provide a better article than the current vague "upto $ 50k per month" or not. As an experienced editor I welcome your point of view, and hopefully we will all reach consensuses or have a clear direction after the discussion. RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:36, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

It is time for somebody to hat this. We will not put SYNTH BLP smears in this article. SPECIFICO talk 21:12, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: I do not see the SYNTH BLP smears in putting in definite well sourced figures about Hunter Biden's earnings from Burisma. It is clearly well sourced and should be discussed and agreed by consensus. As an experienced editor with concerns about BLP I would appreciate why you think there areSYNTH BLP smears and obviously any BLP smears should be removed from the talk page. RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:36, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

BLP rules, whether you see it or not. Most SYNTH is well-sourced, that's how it gets into articles. Sourcing is not the test of SYNTH. SPECIFICO talk 02:58, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

My feeling is that you are misinterpreting WP:SYNTH since there is only 1 source involved in this discussion and the source is the one that is highlighted in external links at the bottom of the article as a much referenced article. It is clearly impossible to have WP:SYNTH with 1 source.RonaldDuncan (talk) 11:17, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

You have been elaborating the SYNTH smears all over this page. I'm not going to repeat myself. I hope you'll back off, because the only other posts I see here are folks trying to move on to more constructive discussion. SPECIFICO talk 13:58, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Summary/Consensus

There has been an extensive discussion above, which has covered a lot of ground. There are 2 sets of fees that could be included in the article, and are well sourced (NYT and others)

Currently the article states "receiving compensation of up to $50,000 per month in some months."

Ping people that have recently edited article or talk page for their views. @Abbyjjjj96:,@Acroterion:,@Alainlambert:,@Alandieslaughing:,@American In Brazil:,@Annamariaanders:,@Billmckern:,@BullRangifer:,@CapabilityAndIntergrity:,@Circulair:,@Da Vinci Nanjing:,@DannyS712:,@Deacon Vorbis:,@Dhrm77:,@Diannaa:,@Drmies:,@Eggishorn:,@ElHef:,@Fafhrdrn1154:,@FloridaArmy:,@Gah4:,@Geo8rge:,@Geographyinitiative:,@GlassBones:,@Harddrive12:,@Herostratus:,@Ingyhere:,@Izno:,@J M Rice:,@Jesbeard:,@Joepayne1974:,@Jogershok:,@Jonesey95:,@Katalley90:,@Koncorde:,@Laurel Long:,@MJL:,@MaynardClark:,@MrX:,@Muboshgu:,@Nakedtruth:,@NatGertler:,@Nblund:,@NoMatMocha:,@Nocturnalnow:,@Noren:,@RonaldDuncan:,@SPECIFICO:,@Sammy Finkelman:,@Saxophilist:,@Seven Pandas:,@SineBot:,@Snooganssnoogans:,@Soibangla:,@Sparticus87:,@Starship.paint:,@Steve Quinn:,@Steveprinty13:,@SunCrow:,@TMLutas:,@Terrorist96:,@TheAntiClark:,@Tobby72:,@Tracymacl:,@Ttestbleuu:,@Verdad2020:,@WIZOZ50:,@Westwind273:,@XOR'easter:,@Zschneider:,

Boies Schiller Flexner Fees

$283,000 to Boies Schiller for legal services in 2014. - NYT

Include

• Include - well sourced and makes clear the initial fees earned for his legal practice RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Keep out

• Exclude, "man is paid money for job" as basically irrelevant. Seems fundamentally WP:POINTY about the nature of being paid for work because Biden is party to a political scandal about another person, rather than any observation about whether or not it is controversial itself to be paid money or its significance. Koncorde (talk) 16:40, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
• Keep it out - It's trivial, transactional, and only distantly related to the subject. - MrX 🖋 16:46, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
• Exclude, per the points made above. XOR'easter (talk) 15:18, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• – Muboshgu (talk) 16:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Consensus

Keep out - so no change to article RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:54, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Rosemont Seneca Fees

$3.4m to Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from April 2014 to late 2015. - NYT

Include

• Include - well sourced and makes clear the initial fees earned by this partnership for his directorship RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Keep out

• Exclude, per above response in Schiller fees. Demonstrate why it's relevant, important, or significant to the biography of Hunter Biden. We are not news. Koncorde (talk) 16:42, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
• Exclude per Koncorde's reasoning. XOR'easter (talk) 15:19, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
• – Muboshgu (talk) 16:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Consensus

Keep out - so no change to article RonaldDuncan (talk) 12:54, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Unproven remarks from a story at NBC News

"He has been the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories concerning his business dealings in Ukraine." reference: "As Sondland testified, a misleading Ukraine story spread among conservatives on social media". NBC News. Retrieved November 21, 2019.

The above statement from the WiKi site is actually based upon unproven remarks from a story at NBC News. Fact: He was on the Board for Burisma Holdings. Fact: Hunter Biden has no experience in energy resources. Why inject the un-investigated position that it is "debunked" at all? This was once a source of information (Wikipedia) that I once respected. Like everything, there is now a political feel to everything. State fact, not impression. MomoMit (talk) 07:02, 5 December 2019 (UTC) MomoMit (talk) 07:02, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

"Proof" is not a Wikipedia standard. Verifiability is. See WP:V and WP:NOTTRUTH. - MrX 🖋 12:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I mean, it is debunked. The statement was "The... story, first disseminated by the finance blog ZeroHedge, claimed that Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had been indicted over money laundering related to the Biden family". But he wasn't. It's not a matter of "probably he wasn't" or "most people say he wasn't" or whatever. He just wasn't, is all. Somebody just made it up. Which made it easy to debunk. In the same sense, if ZeroHedge made up a that Hunter Biden had built a rocket ship out of Q-tips, flown to Jupiter, and enlisted Jovians to use their mind powers to retroactively prevent the Prussian-Danish War of 1864, it would also be pretty easy to debunk that too, and at some point we might want to stop wasting our time on nonsense like that.

MSNBC has fact checkers (I assume) and a good rep. Ben Collins is a legit journalist (I haven't further vetted him yet; can do if required). Brandy Zadrozny is also a legit journalist I believe. There's no reason to not give creedence to whaet Collins and Zadrozny say, especially since there isn't a competing reliable source saying otherwise for goodness' sake.

There is reason to fault Hunter Biden for trading on his name to get a cushy post at Burisma, and that is something that needs to be (carefully) presented to the reader IMO. That doesn't mean he did anything illegal, technically unethical (there's no Code of Ethics for private citizens), or morally wrong. He didn't. And if someone says otherwise, that person needs to pony up some good WP:BLP-level refs or else let it go.

Glad to be on your side here, X. I know that protecting this article from poltroons must be tiresome, and tiring. =) Herostratus (talk) 19:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

MomoMit says: Fact: Hunter Biden has no experience in energy resources

Hunter Biden is a Yale Law attorney and consultant. Many/most people who go to top law schools do so to make top dollar by billing clients at top hourly rates, which explains why America has lots of wealthy attorneys and consultants. Some people have focused on the fact that Hunter was not an energy expert and thus was "unqualified" for the job, while ignoring that he was hired to conduct corporate governance best practices, not to search for oil deposits as a petroleum engineer or geologist. Every company in every industry hires people who are not experts in that company's industry, but they perform other roles to support the company, and many are well-paid for it, especially if they're hired as high-level consultants who bill by the hour for a couple of years and then move on to their next consulting project. Anyone who has ever worked in any significant management role in the corporate world understands this. Corporate governance best practices means creating rules and policies and procedures to run a company properly, and in the case of Burisma, to get rid of corrupt practices so the company could operate by Western standards, as the company sought to do business with Western business partners that would require corporate governance best practices.

soibangla (talk) 19:54, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Here are two facts:

1) Hunter Biden is self-evidently not guilty of any felonious activity, whether fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, or anything else, in connection with anything he did with Burisma or any other entity anywhere; or guilty knowledge of same; or even misdemeanors or even seriously problematic behavior, such a lobbying his father regarding Burisma (or anyone else) or anything like that.

2) Hunter Biden got his job with Burisma at least partly because he is Joe Biden's son.VoxNY TimesNew YorkerThe Atlantic

What I have been looking for is an editor -- anyone -- who is able to hold both of these facts in their head at the same time. Haven't yet found one.

The fact that Hunter Biden got his job for the reason he did doesn't mean he wasn't qualified and good at the job (I haven't studied that question). It just means that he, among hundreds (or more) of other people who are equally qualified or better and would have taken the job, he was chosen because he was Joe Biden's son.

Whether that's worth telling the reader that is a separate question. All I'm looking for at this point: someone who can hold both these facts in their head at the same time. Come on lads and lassies, you can do it. I'm feeling lonesome. Herostratus (talk) 07:57, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Herostratus, whether #1 is a fact is unknown to us. I dispute that #2 is a "fact", based on the sources you listed. It's a possibility.. One opinion writer believes it's true. But none of that establishes it as a fact. - MrX 🖋 12:55, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

user:MrX, it is true that very things in this world are utterly impossible. There are few things that we can "truly know". The universe itself may be an illusion. However, our standards for stating facts are lower: sufficient reliable source(s) to give us a sufficient level of confidence that the fact is true. That can never be 100%, but it needs to be... I dunno, 99% I suppose, something in that area.

As the first, correct. We don't know that Hunter Biden isn't or wasn't involved in some nefarious crimes re Ukraine. However, there are good sources (that we can cite) saying he wasn't, and even more important there are no reliable sources saying otherwise. It strains credulity that if he was involved in nefarious crimes something wouldn't have come up demonstrating that, considering 1) his career in Ukraine has been gone over with a fine comb, 2) there's plenty of partisan reason to seize on any small thing that came up, and 3) his enemies have had to make stuff up out of whole cloth, which indicates that they don't have anything real. That gives me 99% confidence in the statement. Doesn't it you?

Second statement, ditto. Sources that say he was, no sources that say he wasn't, and it strains credulity even more to imagine he'd have gotten the post if his name was John Smith. My confidence is this fact is a lot closer to 100% than it is to 99%. Isn't yours?

Can you look me in the eye and tell me, without lying, that you believe that there's any reasonable chance that Hunter Biden would have been hired by Burisma if his name was John Smith? Can you find anybody else who can? If you can't, why are still arguing about this? Herostratus (talk) 14:19, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not really interested in speculation, and my opinion is not relevant to how we construct this article. If we simply put facts and noteworthy analyses in the article, readers can draw their own conclusions without having it forced down their throats. - MrX 🖋 14:27, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

As I have said repeatedly by this point "rich man's son gets job". It is about as revealing and necessary to state that fact as it would be to state "poor man's son doesn't go to college". We can infer a lot about the dynamic of why the rich man's son and poor man's son outcomes are different - but the significance of speculation and aspersions is fundamentally much lower than the acts that would typically get you coverage. Koncorde (talk) 18:01, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Problem

There's a serious problem with these threads that stray off to ruminate on well-settled off-topic unsourced and debunked speculation. BLP requires us to stay with well-verified sourced material. In the online world of smears, disparagement, "fake news", conspiracy theories etc., repetition of nonsense establishes it in the information ecosystem. Hunter Biden would barely be notable for a WP article were it not for his having been used as a political target en route to his father. That smear of the two of them is ongoing and its promulgators are attempting to grow it even today. This thread and similar ones, when they are clearly not related to article improvement, support those disinformation efforts and should not persist on WP talk pages. SPECIFICO talk 13:15, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

@SPECIFICO: Agreed. He's my synopsis.

I'd like to post a false charge about Hunter Biden in his article. It was made up by Russian intelligence agencies, but it's in line with my political point of view, so I'm OK to do it, right?

No thanks. It's not true.

But I want to believe it's true. So I can publish it, right?

No thanks. It's not true.

Well then, shouldn't we include both the pro AND anti arguments? You know - for balance?

Did I mention it was fabricated by Russian intelligence agencies?

Liberal bias! Unfair!

Billmckern (talk) 13:25, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Billmckern, accurate summary of half of the talk page and its archive. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:37, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

The reaching and stretching to find some way to smear this guy is approaching insanity. soibangla (talk) 18:13, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Could be insane, could be purposeful, could be earnest but mindless. Nevertheless, as the community of editors we needn't diagnose it. We do need to find a way to curtail it now and in the future. It bleeds editor attention and undermines WP's mission and policies. BLP applies on the talk page. SPECIFICO talk 18:20, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Answer

There are a lot of experienced editors working on this page along with a number of Admins, because it is an important page. Not because of the quality of the article, but because of the number or readers. My preference would be to try to get it to good article standard.

e.g. There is not a lot on Biden's early career. He graduated from Yale, at the moment there is no way to tell if he got his job at MBNA on merit or because he was Joe's son. At the moment the article infers it was because he was Joe's son. He then worked in Commerce during the dot com boom on ecommerce. Did he do anything noteworthy? He becomes a lobbyist in 2001 at which point he clearly has a ongoing relationship with Joe even if the assertion that they never discussed his clients is true or not. Who did he lobby for, what were the details, wins losses again no info. E.g. He lobbies for charities and noble causes or he lobbies for mega corps that donate to dad for mega bucks?? No idea, but information would help.

Drugs etc when where has it stopped is it ongoing no info??

In general more information would help any reader understand Hunter Biden and his good and bad points, and provide a more balanced Biography.

At the moment the focus is on blocking and reverting edits ( because a number are inappropriate and do not discuss the edits ), but there are more than enough helping keep out bad edits along with the current autoconfirm status etc etc that there is a lot less vandalism type edits happening and we could focus on improvement.RonaldDuncan (talk) 20:57, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

It's not an important page. It's the son of a Vice-President which is not particularly notable in and of itself. He happens to have done a bit of drugs, not particularly notable. Got involved with his deceased brothers wife, complex, but not particularly notable. Has had some jobs, to be expected, nothing exciting. Was dragged into an insane conspiracy theory by Russian disinformation machine and complicit Ukrainian pals who have friends in the Republican party, who happen to not love America enough to care about how great it is going to be once they're entirely serving Putins foreign policy objectives because they're earning cash doing deals under the table in ways that they only wish they could pin in either Biden. 90% of the notable coverage explains all this before we hear witness testimony, and now close to 99% have come over to the idea that Hunter Biden is an irrelevance other than for click-bait articles and talking head interviews with Fox's contenders for pro-shilling. But he's the "important page"?

I would buy your concern as to the quality of the article as sincerity, but I'm not convinced that more unrelated not-notable crap about his early life before he became the subject of a mid-afternoon soap opera is relevant or carries any due weight. Koncorde (talk) 21:12, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Page views would be one metric that suggests that this page is important. That makes it important to get it right. The article should not infer that he got what he got because of who his father is, unless we have reliably sourced content clearly showing it to be the case. The drug addiction and brother's wife stuff is a valid part of his bio. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:52, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I will clarify in case anyone mistakes what I mean: Hunter Biden himself is passably notable prior to these events, indeed he's a minor board member and public figure only when referenced with his father in almost every scenario. His notability is gained during recent events; however these events do not mean his entire life gains additional significance, relevance, or grant an a la carte menu approach to filling up his bio with pointless information that would not be notable on any other persons bio but due to the abject lack of any significant information about Hunter ends up becoming unduly prominent. Scraping barrels looking for information like does "He lobbies for charities and noble causes or he lobbies for mega corps that donate to dad for mega bucks" is OR and sounds like promoting the idea wikipedia should be out doing the dirty work Private Eye. Koncorde (talk) 22:05, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

it is an important page. No it isn't. Some, indeed many, are trying to make it so to drive a political agenda, and the only reason so many others are involved is to stop that political agenda. soibangla (talk) 22:48, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

It looks like the consensus is that Hunter Biden might not have an article at all if it was not for the current controversy. (It does go back to 2008 but would it have survived a AfD??) If that is the case perhaps more of the article should be about the controversy. There is a very strong statement in the header the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories It only has one ref it should have multiple refs and perhaps a subsection of the article talking about the various right-wing conspiracy theories. In any case either it is one in which case the text is wrong or it is more than one in which case the refs are wrong. Personally I think you could easily find 6 or more, but they should be there. It is about having a balance and expanding this, so we get less people complaining about this line because they have not bothered to read the ref.RonaldDuncan (talk) 13:05, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Ps Added in a ref to the New Yorker overview article on how Biden is being used as part of right-wing conspiracy theories.RonaldDuncan (talk) 13:14, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

It can have as many refs as it wants, but if it the section on conspiracies was large enough then it would almost certainly be linked to the main Trump Scandal article rather than bloating over here. Koncorde (talk) 13:15, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Misleading and biased statements regarding Burisma

The article states "He has been the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories concerning his business dealings in Ukraine.[1] U.S. President Donald Trump's alleged attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden by withholding foreign aid[2][3][4] triggered an impeachment inquiry in September 2019." This statement is not true because these charges are not "debunked" nor are they "right wing conspiracy theories". 1.) Please read https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived 2.) Please read https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-burisma/ukraine-widens-probe-against-burisma-founder-to-embezzlement-of-state-funds-idUSKBN1XU2N7 3.) Please read https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/27/john-kerry-son-email-hunter-biden/ While the matters regarding Hunter Biden are still under investigation , they are not debunked. Under current investigations are, Burisma money laundering, tax evasion, pay to play, fraud (it is alleged that Burisama does not even own the gas rights its selling). The IMF may have also had a dirty hand in meddling in Ukrainian affairs to benefit western interests.

Please drop the language "He has been the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories concerning his business dealings in Ukraine.[1] U.S. President Donald Trump's alleged attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden by withholding foreign aid[2][3][4] triggered an impeachment inquiry in September 2019."

These matters are still under active investigation.TrueFire (talk) 10:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

1. John Solomon has been proven involved with the Trump campaign to gin up allegations.

2. Case is against Zlochevsky, and dates back to prior to Biden.

3. Heinz distancing himself is irrelevant. I find it strange an article would say "Here's why" and then actually not say "why", meanwhile "Burisma Holdings was the focus of a “U.K. money laundering probe,” the Examiner reported. The company paid $3.4 million in 2014 and 2015 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC" is a smear by association. The money laundering probe pre-dates Rosemont, and the money laundering probe is the reason that the prosecutor was demanded by the UK, EU and US to be fired (see Joe Biden).

None of the sources provided show Hunter under investigation, and many others show the reality of the situation is very different by giving real context. Koncorde (talk) 11:29, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The Reuters source does not support your assertion and The Daily Caller is not a reliable source. The opinion article in The Hill has been roundly rejected because of its author. See previous discussions on this page.- MrX 🖋 12:45, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@TrueFire: Hi the sources against the right-wing conspiracy theories are about stuff that is obvious nonsense. Unfortunately, a lot of people assume this is the entire discussion about Hunter Biden and Burisma. There is in the article plenty of information about how Zlochevsky was an oligarch who got the gas rights and then was under multiple investigations, and quickly appointed a Western board who where highly paid to protect him post revolution. Along with sources who pointed out that Hunter Biden going on the board was wrong when he was appointed. However at the moment whilst wrong it was not illegal.

1 This was a detailed investigation, and most of the information can be independently verified. It was checked and used as a source for the NYT article. It was the start of the campaign using Hunter Biden against Joe Biden.

2 Zlochevsky has plenty to answer, question is did Hunter do anything illegal on a board that had a conference call every 6 months - probably not - even if responsible for corporate governance he is unlikely to have signed a check to bribe the prosecutors or even be aware of any such activity.

3 The article says that Heinz wanted nothing to do with it.

The article does need improvement. Unfortunately, the "He has been the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories concerning his business dealings in Ukraine." is about some of the madder conspiracy theories of which there are many rather than the topic as a whole. However, it is unlikely that Hunter Biden will have done anything illegal at Burisma, just because of the nature of this job as a Non Executive Director. He may have not paid taxes etc etc, but that would require a separate investigation in the US, which does not seem to be happening. Joe Biden's boast about firing the prosecutor is clearly a false boast, since it was months later rather than 6 hours later. So again unlikely to be illegal since it was the Western consensus he needed to go. Looking at it from a Ukrainian point of view. The US person running Ukraine, believed that he had complete control of the country and could fire senior people at a few hours notice. Not illegal, but not a good look. RonaldDuncan (talk) 16:15, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

There are lots of questions about Trump's taxes, which don't seem to be being investigated very fast. (He claims to have been under audit since the beginning of the campaign. They should have had some results by now.) But if either Biden was being investigated by the IRS, we probably wouldn't know about it. Personally, I probably wouldn't work for a company like Burisma, but there are those who do it with the intent of cleaning things up. Also, many companies hire US lawyers to help in sales to US companies, and understand US laws. I suspect that US lawyers can also help with some other countries, too. Gah4 (talk) 00:17, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Here’s my two cents, coming from someone who barely follows American politics: I came to this article because I wanted to learn some general information about Hunter Biden. I read in the lede that he had been the subject of “debunked right-wing conspiracies”. A link is provided. Cool, I say to myself. I love reading about conspiracy theories. So I click the link, which takes me to the section about Burisma. There’s just one problem: this section says nothing about conspiracy theories. It gives a rundown on the Burisma affair, including what transpired and how it’s tied in to the current impeachment proceedings. OK, but that’s not what the link said or what I wanted to know. I’m not told what the conspiracy theories are (I assume they’re multiple), who perpetuated them, when they started being perpetuated, or how they were debunked.

Maybe the context is obvious to an American audience who follows Biden closely in their media, but this makes zero sense to me and is clearly misleading. Don’t link to a section allegedly about conspiracy theories when that section in fact does not mention conspiracy theories at all. --Katangais (talk) 19:28, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Katangais, I suggest you follow the two reference external links rather than the wikilink. soibangla (talk) 19:41, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

OK, but if the wikilink about conspiracy theories does not link to any conspiracy theories, it ought to be removed. --Katangais (talk) 19:51, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

I presume you mean the linked section should characterize them as such, not that it should repeat them. Yes a sentence could be added about their life in the Trump media circuit. SPECIFICO talk 03:05, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 18 December 2019

Why is it that Hunter Biden's job as the Vice Chairman of the National Railroad Passenger Corp (better known as Amtrak) from 7/2006 to 2013 not listed in Wikepedia? I see it in Bloomberg News. 2620:160:E308:0:0:0:0:8 (talk) 22:13, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

It is. soibangla (talk) 22:14, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

 Already done The article currently states: "He was a board member from July 2006 until he resigned in February 2009[23] and the board's vice chairman from July 2006 to January 2009,[24] leaving both roles shortly after his father became vice president." – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:05, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

POV problem here I believe

Disclaimers:

• I hate Donald Trump with a passion. I think he's a [BLP violation redacted], a [BLP violation redacted], and even a [shocking and egregious BLP violation redacted].
• I don't have a particularly strong opinion about Hunter Biden (not a fan tho), but he's obviously innocent of these recent ridiculous Ukraine charges, and I think any disinterested and informed person would agree.

Hunter Biden is completely innocent of these charges. That doesn't mean he's the bee's knees either. If I may be vouchsafed leave to quote from a liberal writer, Matthew Yglesias at Vox:

Hunter Biden’s whole career is being Joe Biden’s son... Hunter interestingly went to work right away for MBNA, a major Delaware-based bank (later purchased by Bank of America) that was also a big contributor to Biden’s campaigns. This was part of a much larger coziness between Biden and the bank... [I]t’s more like Hunter got the job due to his dad’s overall cozy relationship with the company.... In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed him to the Amtrak board of directors as a gesture of bipartisanship... It would obviously be a stretch to attribute any specific shortcoming of passenger rail in the United States to Hunter Biden’s service on the board. But the fact that the job is treated as a kind of patronage position to hand out to random senators’ kids who have no relevant knowledge beyond riding the train a lot helps explain why American passenger rail is low quality and exhibits little understanding of international best practices. When his dad became vice president, Hunter left the Amtrak board and instead got involved with a series of investment companies. As detailed by Ben Schreckinger in Politico, a lot of this work seems to have hinged on Hunter and his uncle James Biden sort of hinting around that the family connection to the vice president could help get things done and then not delivering. The Obama administration generally regarded Hunter as a kind of embarrassing family black sheep rather than a real scandal.

And there's a lot more. It's an opinion piece. That doesn't necessarily make it a poor analysis. Yglesias and Vox are generally trustworthy on facts, too.

But, I mean, you're not going to get any of this from the lede. You're not going to get any of this from the article. The lede describes him a blameless victim of a particular incident (true), but the article is pretty anyodyne -- he did this, he did that, which is... misleading, if you believe Yglesias. The article implies that he's a sterling figure whose main concern is to ensure that there's no possibility him taking advantage of his father's power and fame. The article is POV. The lede is POV.

I don't have exact specific changes to suggest at this time, but I wanted to start by pointing this out. Herostratus (talk) 07:14, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what you feel you have pointed out. There are dozens of comments and passing remarks about every politician and businessman out there that do not make the lede of an article, and few make it within the main body either, because they do not reflect any significant weight. What is it we should take from the above? Biden has had success as a result of his father being a major political figure?

Sentence 1, Early Positions section.

"After graduating from law school, Biden took a position at MBNA America, a major bank holding company which was also a major contributor to his father's political campaigns.[8]"

That seems to succinctly sum up the above?

Sentence 4, same section seems to reference the second portion of the Iglesias article too

"In 2006, Biden and his uncle, James Biden, attempted to buy Paradigm, a hedge-fund group, but the deal fell apart before completion.[8]"

Could it say "Biden was alleged to have traded on his fathers success"? Maybe, but it is denied by both James and Hunter, and Beau Biden is dead, and no other individual has come forward. So it's tittle tattle at best. So what exactly is it that you want us to include? What clarification of rich daddy's boy would help to 'balance' the POV you see? Should we say that he is unqualified? Not stated in any source, he has qualifications and demonstrates experience through the roles he has had however he got them. Should we say that he only got any job due to his name? Speculation. Should we blame the poor performance of Amtrak on him? Seems a stretch from a passing snide comment in an op-ed doesn't it? So what should there be? Bearing in mind that the only reason Hunter has a Wiki article about him at all is because of Burisma. He probably fails notability aside. Koncorde (talk) 08:27, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Technical addressing of Koncorde's last comment: this article has existed since 2008, six years before Biden was involved in Burisma. While that doesn't mean that it would've survived AFD if filed, there seem to have been a fair number of editing hands on it without AFD being proposed nor major tags resting on it in that era. --Nat Gertler (talk) 10:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I was being facetious about the mans relative lack of notability. That wikipedia managed to have an article on him dating back to 2008 is quite impressive levels of insight into his future notability! Koncorde (talk) 10:52, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

@Herostratus: If you believe the article omits important biographical information about Biden's career, why not make those additions yourself? Right now, the article is too heavily weighted toward his Burisma board membership because of the association with the Trump-Ukraine scandal. The lead is also heavily weighted toward current events, but I don't see major NPOV issues. - MrX 🖋 12:28, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

I disagree that BLP was not the right forum. BLP require more stringent standards for NPOV and verification that other articles. And yet, almost the entire article here is taken up with polemics, using polemical sources. Virtually every citation is editorial opinion, which each side uses as ammo, not to inform but to advocate. There's not supposed to be a "side" in a Wikipedia article, especially BLP. I posted on BLP because BLP POLICY is being violated blatantly. It's so obvious, that those who claim it's not are part of the problem. Further aggravating the situation is one or more ADMINs using their privileges to block clean-up attempts and perpetuate this mess, which is why I headlined my BLP post thus.

As I reminded the abusive ADMIN, who shamefully participates in this POV travesty, Wikipedia is not a soapbox, nor is it journalism. Wikipedia is not a disseminator of "truth" but of facts uncolored by POV. Your telling me to "calm down" is offensive, because the POV here is so blatant—participated in and abetted by a rogue ADMIN—as to be outrageous. This disease pervades Wikipedia, making its reliability useless thanks to Mr. Wales' demagoguery that "We don't need peer review. You decide the facts." Crowd-sourced information. The glib "Well, if you don't like it, then don't use it," is disingenuous, because Wikipedia has become a monopoly. How could it not, when it enables any fanboy or fanatic or advocate to publish his/her opinion, which edits/deletion he/she can revert, with ADMINS, expert in clothing their bias with boilerplate, threatening the reverted editor with blocking? Wikipedia is not a soapbox is not a guideline but POLICY. Why should anyone who gives a darn remain calm when articles which patently violate POLICY not only are not allowed to be cleaned up but protected by reverts supported by biased ADMIN bullies?

To demonstrate how Kafkaesque this issue has become, the rogue ADMIN calls neutrality "equivocation" and "we" provide "truth" to the readers, as if "we" were the New York Times. Then, someone calling himself Mr. X says, just because I call my edits NPOV doesn't make them so. Look at my edits; see what they replace.

Just look at this Talk page. The rule is that article Talk pages only discuss whether the article is properly formed—NPOV, formatting, proper sourcing. "Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject" What a joke! This Talk page is just a backroom version of the article's foodfight. Why do you feel the need to write a disclaimer about how much you hate Trump and how innocent Hunter is? To assure the partisans you're on their side? A Wikipedia editor isn't supposed to be on any side! He's just supposed to gather—not select, not marshal—information on a topic from recognized, non-advocacy secondary sources, or if there's controversy, then say "so-and-so says or alleges," then the citation to show where so-and-so comes from, not state your opinion as fact and then stick a footnote on it. To say "such-and-such was debunked" is opinion, not fact. The source's allegation is the fact; let the reader decide its credibility. The former is editorial journalism, the latter encyclopedic which Wikipedia claims it is, and which "articles" like this make a mockery of.

Believe me, I can be quite calm when discussing subject merits. I was calm when I suggested that the POV I tried to fix at least be moved from the lede to the debate below. But no, that wouldn't do, because the Rogue ADMIN wanted to score his point in the lede. What no one should stay calm about is the blatant and pervasive hijacking of articles and its condoning by ADMINS and their mobs, while Jimmy Wales, having created this Frankenstein-on-Autopilot, is off creating Wikipedia version of Facebook/Twitter/Google. That's great: Crowd-sourced news. A bit redundant, given we already have it here.

By the way, I appreciate your recognizing the obvious, that this thing is POV through-and-through. But I'm afraid any attempt to clean it up to BLP standards will be like cleaning up the Augean Stables, for which I don't have the time or fortitude and which, doubtless, the mobs who run this place count on. I wish you the best of luck.

— J M Rice (talk) 21:52, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

If you want to propose an edit and work toward a consensus, this the place to do it. If you want to lecture experienced editors on the failings of Wikipedia, or your version of what NPOV looks like, this is not the place to do it. Please start a blog if you want to pontificate. - MrX 🖋 22:23, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Wholly echo Mr X sentiment. Koncorde (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

what they▲ said soibangla (talk) 22:28, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Seems to me that the Trump claim is that he made $50k/month at Burisma, and so is obviously guilty. On the other hand, as well as I know, he did have the experience in business and law to do what he was supposed to do. Sometimes having a known name is useful, even without using any undue (that is, illegal) advantage. The salary might be high compared to US firms, but is it too high for Burisma? Gah4 (talk) 23:30, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Trump claim - President Donald Trump said this month that Biden was paid “$100,000 a month” plus unspecified bonuses “even though he had no experience in energy.” - Which of course is not supported by any source anywhere, but that has not stopped large numbers of organisations reporting this number, one of the reasons this article needs to be correct.RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Moving forward

An editor did a kind of "shut up" closing of this discussion, which I'm reverting per WP:BRD. Let's not discuss that here, ANI would be the venue.

User:Koncorde reasonably asked what specific changes I wanted to suggest, and defended the article as it is. User:MrX suggested "fix it yourself", which I get, but I don't want to do that without discussion and trying to get consensus first; it's a fraught issue, and arguing via edit summary is not going to be sufficient. User:J M Rice is wrong that this is a a BLP issue -- it's not, and nobody else is going to agree with her, so she might as well drop it.

Alright. On the to merits.

User:Koncorde vouchsafed that article already covers Hunter Biden's... well, Hunter Bidenness... with

"After graduating from law school, Biden took a position at MBNA America, a major bank holding company which was also a major contributor to his father's political campaigns.[8]"

and

"In 2006, Biden and his uncle, James Biden, attempted to buy Paradigm, a hedge-fund group, but the deal fell apart before completion.[8]"

But the problem is only the first speaks to a conflict of interest. One sentence, and I believe that's all that's in the article, really, that addresses that aspect of being Hunter Biden.

I mean, look, there's a big difference between Senator Tom Carper saying

Hunter Biden is a native Delawarian and I would go on to say that he’s also been nominated to serve on the Amtrak Board of Directors. Mr Biden has a master's degree in Transportation and Logistics. He has worked on strategic policy and traffic analysis at the The Federal Railroad Administration, which is part of the Department of Transportation, reporting directly to Pinckney Pruddle, director of the FRA. He is the author of Investigating Bayesian Optimization for rail network optimization published in the Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, and has worked on the Northeast Corridor Future project

and Senator Tom Carper saying

Hunter Biden is a native Delawarian and I would go on to say that he’s also been nominated to serve on the Amtrak Board of Directors. [He has had a fine career and is a fine fellow, but] more specifically, though, and for our purposes and for the purpose of this nomination, Hunter Biden has spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains. Like his father, like our Congressman, Mike Castle and myself, Hunter Biden has lived in Delaware while using Amtrak to commute to his job as we commute to our job in Washington almost every day of the week. You know, you learn a lot about what could work and what would work better at Amtrak by riding trains and talking to the passengers, the commuters, the passengers, the folks who work on the trains and make them work every day.

The latter is what Senator Tom Carper did say.

Let's not be blind, Hunter Biden was put on the Amtrak board of directors because he is the son of a powerful politician. Senator Tom Carper couldn't say that could he. So he blathered about riding the train, which is frankly embarrassing. BTW Senator Tom Carper has no idea if Hunter Biden spend time talking to "the passengers, the commuters, the passengers" (heh) (and if he did whether they talked about sports or whatever), or "the folks who work on the trains and make them work every day", by which I suppose he means the conductors, as I doubt he spent a lot of time in the driver's cabin.

Don't get me wrong. I would have taken the job too. I could use the money. I'm not saying that Hunter Biden is a blackguard or anything. What I am saying is, in helping the reader understand the entity Hunter Biden, then "That same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to a five year term on the board of directors of Amtrak because he was Joe Biden's son" tells the reader something more useful in getting a handle on this entity than just "That same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to a five year term on the board of directors of Amtrak". See what I'm saying? I'm not suggesting that exact wording necessarily, but you get what I'm saying.

So there's one concrete suggestion. You don't have to agree. But it's not insane to suggest this. The larger task here is to maybe get editors to consider that fact that Hunter Biden is now, basically, a kind of martyr doesn't mean his earlier career is... complicated. We can try to convince each other and maybe be can come up with ways to improve the article. Together. Herostratus (talk) 03:25, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Look, this is easy. If you want to assert in the article that he was appointed to Amtrak because of his father, you need to provide a reliable source to support it. Lacking that, a reader is left to decide for themself whether to draw that conclusion. Think of all the other BLPs we'd have to consider for the change you propose, all because some people are engaged in a political smear of Joe Biden and they're reaching for some whiff of scandal they can latch onto. Should we talk about the Trump kids, too? soibangla (talk) 03:42, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

WP:SKYISBLUE. You know, I know, and everybody else knows that if his name had been Hunter Btfsplk he wouldn't have been on the Amtrak board. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon know this.

It's difficult to prove things like this. Only the principals themselves could provide proof. Mathew Yglesias is a notable person, and Vox probably has fact-checkers (possibly not). Yglesias is as reliable as any other pundit for statements of fact, and has as much standing as any other pundit to address this issue. It's highly probable that his quotes of Senator Tom Carper and so on are accurate, for instance.

If you want to be stubborn about it, I suppose we could go with

That same year he was appointed by President George W. Bush to a five year term on the board of directors of Amtrak because, according to to Matt Yglesias, he was Joe Biden's son.

provided that we use that same standard for other statements of fact, e.g. changing "He has been the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories concerning his business dealings in Ukraine" to

He has been the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories concerning his business dealings in Ukraine which, according to Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, have been debunked.

I don't favor either of these. I'd prefer that self-evidently true facts not be attributed, since that leaves the impression that they are contested by reasonable people. Either way is OK I guess, provided we remember that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

And hell yeah Trump's kids should get the same treatment. I'm not in favor of giving the reader the impression that person succeeded in life on their own merits when they didn't. Herostratus (talk) 10:55, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

If it's difficult to prove, then isn't it just scuttlebutt? The idea that "Rich mans son gets job that pays money" is about as insightful as "poor mans kids wear hand-me-downs". It's largely irrelevant speculation. We might suggest that "Yglesias speculated Biden got his job because..." but who is Yglesias? Why does his speculation carry weight? That is not denying it isn't true, but it's also a truism. Koncorde (talk) 11:34, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Koncorde. I don't think there is much value in documenting the suitability of Biden for the Amtrak job. I also think we can do better than saying the Biden has been the subject of right-wing conspiracy theories, and I would support a more factual approach.- MrX 🖋 12:57, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

If, as you say, this is something that "You know, I know, and everybody else knows", then we do not have to tell it to people, do we? After all, they already know. Plus, this is a BLP, and if we're going to say something that can be taken as a negative, we need proper sourcing. (You invoke WP:SKYISBLUE; if you read that essay, it notes that the requirement for inline citations "covers much, most, or possibly even (in the case of biographies of living people) all content in an article".) --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:08, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

OK. Good discussion! So, I mean, there are cogent points here, and thank you.

"If it's difficult to prove, then isn't it just scuttlebutt?" Well... I don't know. Motive is hard to prove. It's hard to know for certain what is in someone's mind, if he keeps mum or lies. Still... it doesn't stop prosecutors, or historians, or pundits, or everyone really, from demonstrating stuff to a high level of confidence using inference from circumstance. I mean, you can prove that 2+2=4, but you can't prove that Hunter Biden was put on the Amtrak board because, or mostly because, he's Joe's son. You can only demonstrate to at 99.99% level of confidence.

If you want to dispute it, that's different. Just say "I don't believe that Hunter Biden was put on the Amtrak board because, or mostly because, he's Joe's son", and we'll take it from there.

Re "I don't think there is much value in documenting the suitability of Biden for the Amtrak job" mnmh OK. But I mean you don't think there is much value in documenting the suitability of Biden for the Amtrak job because why? Is it trivial? Is it misleading? Is it confusing? or what? If the Amtrak job is worth mentioning it's worth mentioning why he got it, which is very important part of the whole phenomena "Hunter Biden working for Amtrak", I would say. It the entire phenomena "Hunter Biden working for Amtrak" is sub-notable we could skip all mention of it instead.

I see the point re WP:BLP considerations... right, if I understand BLP correctly, at least in spirit it doesn't apply to positive things. So positive bias (if it's there) is an NPOV issue, but we want to be careful not to overcorrect and step into BLP territory. Fair point. I'd never thought of it that way before. Yes, we do want to be super careful. We shouldn't say anything that could hurt the feelings of reputation of Hunter Biden if we can reasonably avoid it, and even then we want AAA-level refs. (Ugh, no, I didn't read SKYISBLUE recently, so should not have cited it, sorry.)

As to "You know, I know, and everybody else knows", I mean everybody who has studied that matter. Our audience here includes schoolchildren in Mumbai, retired postmen in Weston, bedridden Dutch priests, and so on. We want them to get a proper and correct "take" on Hunter Biden, is all. We can't be like "Well of course he got the job because of his dad, DUR, it's an insult to the reader to have to spell it out". Wikipedia doesn't work like that; we have to assume a worldwide audience, not all of whom are super informed on United States politics, government, rules, and customs, or are super facile with English even.

Alright. Let's continue talking to and not past each other, and I (or anyone else who wants to) can down the road offer specific proposals to change X to Y. Herostratus (talk) 00:40, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

No, I don't think it's time to continue talking. I think it's time that you recognize that people have repeatedly told you that we should not be inserting into the article what your assumption is of what everyone else assumes. If you haven't read over WP:DROPTHESTICK lately, I recommend it. --Nat Gertler (talk) 02:12, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

The article needs improvement, is all. "repeated telling" isn't an argument. I know it's an emotional subject. I know that our democracy is on the knife edge. It doesn't matter for our purposes here. Let's tone it down mnmh. But anyway, looks like maybe some RfC to get fresh eyes on these issues would be a good next step. Herostratus (talk) 17:34, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

When there's been clear consensus against your view for an extended thread like this, it's time to drop it. SPECIFICO talk 17:46, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

I think the article needs improvement. Unfortunately we have all put much more effort into the talk page arguments rather than the article. It is not helped by a revert and move to talk page for most edits. There are three groups coming to the article

Trump voters - they read the Right wing conspiracy theory opening and go nuts. They do not read the sources, and what are the subjects of the "right wing conspiracy theory" and come on here and sound off about the article. The sources are fine and support the point, but it does need expansion in its own section ideally with some of the articles that balance since it is clearly a mix of factual articles and editorial opinion.

anybody but Trump voters - I think we are getting less abuse from this side, but there are still plenty of people that think that Hunter Biden is perfect and without blemish because he is being attacked by Trump.

the rest of the world - who are not getting hourly updates on the latest bit of the circus, and would like some well researched independent background i.e an Encyclopedia article on Hunter Biden, which is why Wikipedia exists and hopefully why we are all editors. RonaldDuncan (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't think there are any "anybody but Trump voters", certainly nobody thinks anyone is free from criticism, but when the criticism is political, or intended to malign or presented in a way that is loaded with supposition, and lacking support from the significant weight of reliable sources it doesn't go in. That should go for laudatory just as much as critical. Koncorde (talk) 16:43, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

This is an addition to Ronald Ducan"s comment from a libertarian perspective. In other words, this is the voice of someone who is NOT a Trump voter but definitely agrees with the need to improve on the phrasing "He has been the subject of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories."

This phrasing is more opinion based with a pejorative connotation. It attributes motives to the accusers which are surmised, but cannot be known. It implies there cannot possibly be a good faith reason to question what happened with Burisma and the Bidens. Calling someone a conspiracy theorist is dismissive because its connotation has come to mean someone who is cuckoo for cocoa puffs doolally. The phrasing as is contradicts some of the guidelines given for this page which are Assume good faith and Avoid personal attacks.

Take each individual word and try and see why people might find it insulting. The first word is debunked. One definition of debunk is to reduce the reputation someone, especially by ridicule. It insinuates the matter or person in question lacks all credibility. The next word is right-wing. Identifying it as right-wing is divisive and assumptive. It also indicates bias. It "others" a significant portion of the populace, and it making something that is main stream sound fringe. Remember that 1 in 8 Trump voters also voted for Obama. The last phrase is conspiracy theories. As previously stated, calling something a conspiracy theory is dismissive. It brings to mind Art Bell Roswell alien autopsy and Alex Jones Sandy Hook was an inside job type nuttery. It immediately rules out any semblance of honest questioning.

Why not just say something along the lines of "There have been accusations of malfeasance surrounding his term as board member for Ukrainian energy company Burisma, but no evidence of wrongdoing has been substantiated to date." Link to the articles without editorializing and let people make up their own minds. 156.98.134.224 (talk) 15:41, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

We can't say it because there are no accusations substantiated. That is lending undue weight to conspiracy theories, or spurious claims not supported by the weight of articles. We might say "Bidens role at Burisma was the source of criticism at the time of his appointment, and subsequently was a focus of Trumps attempts to publicly smear his leading rival for the Presidency", but we cannot say either Biden has been accused of malfeasance (which may indicate criminal acts). In order of issues presented:

1. The accusers have clear motives, it isn't corruption.

2. The conspiracy theories are advanced by right-wing conspiracy theorists. That other people buy into them does not change the definition of the origin.

3. If there are legitimate concerns about 1 & 2, then we reference the sources expressing those opinions.

4. If 1 in 8 Trump voters previously voted for Obama, this doesn't mean that they don't believe in conspiracy theories. It also doesn't mean that they don't hold right-wing opinions. Opposing orthodoxy of the GOP was just as much a reason to vote for Trump as Obama. The US political spectrum is distinctly right wing across the board (which is why relatively centre-right candidates like Clinton and Obama are hilariously called socialists).

5. It is "nuttery". Better still it is projection by people actually profiteering, spreading the conspiracy theories created by Russian agents and their allies. That so many people cannot see that they have been taken in by it only goes to show how much editorialising by their own selective sources has led them down the garden path. Koncorde (talk) 16:43, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 27 December 2019

Hunter's dealings with Burisma Holdings have not been debunked. There is an investigation on the legitimacy. They can’t be conspiracy theories because they meet the definition requirement for a conspiracy theory. The notions are not conspiracy theories, but rather legal theories. 2603:3021:3704:1D00:A5B0:2A0E:9C38:313 (talk) 15:22, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:29, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 19 December 2019

This statement should be clarified:

Trump falsely told Zelensky that "[Joe] Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution" of his son; Joe Biden did not stop any prosecution, did not brag about doing so, and there is no evidence his son was ever under investigation.

The source cited states that:

Shokin, hired in 2015, was fired in 2016. Biden bragged about the saga at an event in January 2018, recounting how he had threatened to withhold a billion-dollar US loan guarantee to Ukraine if Shokin was not removed.

A proposed clarification would be as follows:

Trump falsely told Zelensky that "[Joe] Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution" of his son. Although Joe Biden had bragged in January 2018 about threatening to withhold a billion-dollar US loan guarantee to Ukraine if Shokin was not removed, Joe Biden did not stop any prosecution, did not brag about doing so, and there is no evidence his son was ever under investigation. 47.204.251.223 (talk) 03:14, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit extended-protected}} template. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 03:35, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

His dealings with Burisma Holdings are indeed not debunked. They aren’t public, but they are publicly seen as extremely shady by most of the Republican Party and by a strong number of independents. So the so called “conspiracy theories” can truly not be conspiracy theories, they are legal theories of what is going on, and if it was enough that the president of the United States is going to ask a foreign president to investigate (something completely within his power, both Obama and Bush have done this), then clearly there MIGHT be something fishy. Not for sure, but not a guarantee of the Biden’s being innocent. Nate Rybner 04:44, 28 December 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naterybner (talk • contribs)

You offer no evidence of anything, only hearsay. If your standard is "not a guarantee of ... being innocent", then EVERYBODY is guilty of everything. "Seen as extremely shady" is just a politically-motivated nothingburger. – Muboshgu (talk) 04:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Number of Children Wrong

They page says three, but it's currently four. [5] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.201.32.200 (talk) 04:04, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Have updated personal life with ref to Judges ruling and children to 4. Thanks for your contribution. RonaldDuncan (talk) 23:24, 11 January 2020 (UTC)