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# HUNTER BIDEN: THE EXHAUSTED GOLDEN GOOSE
- URL: https://the-ff-express.ghost.io/hunter-biden-the-exhausted-golden-goose/
- Published: 2026-09-25T23:59:59.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-25T23:59:59.000Z
- Author: Cristina Marin

**For years, enormous amounts of money moved toward Hunter Biden. Some of that money came through dealings involving foreign countries and foreign business interests, while other money came through consulting agreements, board positions, legal retainers and domestic business relationships. Then came a newly acquired passion for art — a career that produced remarkably expensive sales for a new artist.**  
  
THE FF… EXPRESS is going to shine a flashlight on some of these business endeavors and the fortunes they contributed to Hunter Biden’s Golden Goose. **We are going to follow the fucking money** \- because the question underneath all of this is remarkably simple: **What, exactly, was Hunter Biden being paid for?**  
  
Hunter Biden did not enter this world without credentials. He was not an unemployed idiot who suddenly discovered his father’s telephone number. He graduated from Yale Law School, worked at the Department of Commerce, practiced law (now disbarred) and accumulated experience in lobbying, investment and corporate governance. Any serious examination of his résumé has to acknowledge that background. **It also has to acknowledge the surname**, because Hunter possessed something no law school could confer and no résumé could adequately quantify. He was the son of a longtime United States senator, then the son of the vice president, then the son of a former vice president running for president, who remained one of the most recognizable political figures in the world, and eventually the son of the president of the United States.  
  
THE FF… EXPRESS is not starting from the assumption that Hunter Biden’s income was corrupt. What we are saying is that the sources of that income, and the value he offered to the people paying him, are worth examining. Hunter himself has acknowledged that his name opened doors. Special Counsel David Weiss’s final report went considerably further, concluding that Hunter used his surname and connections to obtain lucrative business opportunities, specifically citing Burisma and his Chinese business relationships. That report was written after Hunter had pleaded guilty to federal tax charges and after years of federal investigation into his finances. 

So let’s follow the fucking money.

**UKRAINE:**   
In May 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural-gas company whose founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, had served in the government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. His business associate Devon Archer joined the board as well. Hunter’s role was described by longtime business associate Eric Schwerin as focusing on government and legal affairs, and Hunter remained associated with Burisma for several years. Congressional records show substantial compensation: Archer confirmed under oath that an August 2015 record showed two Burisma payments of approximately $83,000 each, one associated with him and one with Hunter, although Archer explained that the payments went through their business entity rather than simply landing as personal paychecks. 

The obvious question has followed the arrangement ever since: **Why Hunter Biden?** He was an attorney and businessman, but he was not a Ukrainian energy executive. His professional experience could provide value to a corporate board, but so could something considerably harder to place on a balance sheet — his name, his relationships and his proximity to the vice president of the United States.

The potential value of that proximity was not merely a concern invented years later by political opponents. U.S. officials inside the Obama administration expressed discomfort about Hunter’s Burisma position while Joe Biden was leading significant portions of American policy toward Ukraine. A later Senate investigation reported that State Department official George Kent raised concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest, while energy diplomat Amos Hochstein also raised the political complications created by Hunter’s position. The report was produced by Republican committee leadership, so its broader political conclusions should be read as attributed findings, but the underlying concerns from government officials belong in the record.

There is another piece of the Ukraine story that became politically explosive years later. Joe Biden himself publicly described using American financial leverage to push Ukraine to remove Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, Biden recalled telling Ukrainian leaders that a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee would not move forward unless the prosecutor was removed. He described giving them approximately six hours before his departure and then, with characteristic Biden bluntness, told the audience what happened next: **“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”**

The event is real. What it proves is considerably more contested. Biden was carrying out the Obama administration’s anti-corruption policy, and Shokin’s performance was also being criticized by international institutions, European officials and Ukrainian reformers. Evidence that Biden used the loan guarantee to demand Shokin’s removal therefore does not, by itself, establish that he was trying to protect Hunter or Burisma. But because Hunter was simultaneously sitting on Burisma’s board and being paid substantial sums while his father was deeply involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine, the episode became inseparable from later questions about the appearance of conflict surrounding Hunter’s position.

Devon Archer’s 2023 congressional testimony gives us an unusually candid look at that value. Archer testified that during his decade-long partnership with Hunter, Hunter sometimes put his father on speakerphone in the presence of business associates and estimated that this occurred perhaps twenty times. Archer said the conversations he witnessed were generally casual rather than discussions of specific business, but when investigators pressed him about what Hunter was providing to clients, Archer described part of it as **“the brand.”** In his words, that brand was being delivered alongside Hunter’s other capabilities and reach. 

That testimony does not require us to invent a government favor in order to recognize something commercially valuable. If you are sitting across the table from the son of the vice president and he can casually put his father on the telephone, the relationship has just become visible in the room. No government decision has to change for that demonstration of proximity to carry value.

Hunter was also being paid extraordinarily well while that proximity was visible. He later described his Burisma board compensation as approximately **$65,000 a month**, **or roughly $780,000 a year**. Records from an earlier period show Burisma payments of approximately **$83,000 each associated with Hunter Biden and Devon Archer**, routed through their business entity, Rosemont Seneca Bohai. When Archer was questioned about an August 2015 record showing those two payments, he confirmed them while explaining that the money was treated as revenue of their company. That brings us back to the question: **What was Burisma buying?** One person who was actually there offered an answer that cannot simply be dismissed as partisan speculation. 

Ukraine gives us the first piece of the Golden Goose. Hunter had legitimate professional credentials, but the evidence also shows that his political surname was understood as part of what surrounded him commercially. The question becomes more difficult when the trail moves east.

**CHINA:**   
Hunter Biden’s relationship with the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy produced millions of dollars and some of the most scrutinized communications in his business history. Unlike many claims surrounding Hunter Biden, the basic flow of money here is not dependent solely on material from his laptop. The Washington Post reconstructed the relationship using government records, court documents, bank statements, agreements and electronic communications. Over approximately fourteen months, CEFC and its executives paid about $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden.   
  
A signed August 2017 agreement provided Hunter with a $500,000 initial retainer and then $100,000 per month, while James Biden was to receive $65,000 per month. Bank records showed approximately $1.4 million subsequently moving from Hunter’s company to James Biden’s consulting firm. Hunter also signed a separate $1 million legal-retainer agreement to represent Patrick Ho, a CEFC executive who was later convicted in an unrelated international bribery case. Hunter was not accused of participating in Ho’s bribery scheme. 

What makes the CEFC relationship particularly interesting for Golden Goose is that the grand business plans did not have to succeed for enormous amounts of money to move. The energy projects Hunter discussed with CEFC never materialized, yet millions were paid through consulting agreements and the legal retainer. 

There was also a much larger number being discussed before the final arrangement emerged. IRS investigators later described communications in which Hunter was unhappy that a proposed arrangement he believed would produce $10 million a year appeared instead to be heading toward $5 million. According to investigators’ notes reported by The Washington Post, Hunter argued that he could earn $5 million at an American law firm and emphasized what the Bidens could do for the CEFC chairman and the partnership. Within days, the eventual CEFC arrangement was struck, and the documented $4.8 million began flowing over the following fourteen months. 

**Then there is the July 2017 WhatsApp message that has become one of the most politically combustible pieces of the entire Hunter Biden story**. In material released through congressional investigations, Hunter told CEFC associate Raymond Zhao that he was sitting with his father while demanding fulfillment of a commitment and warning of consequences if it was not honored. Republicans investigating the Biden family’s finances have argued that the message demonstrates Hunter invoking his father’s power in a foreign business negotiation. The precise circumstances of the message, including whether Joe Biden was actually sitting beside Hunter and what Joe knew about the exchange, have been disputed. What is directly relevant to Golden Goose is that Hunter himself invoked his father while pressing a Chinese business associate about a financial commitment.

That is evidence about how Hunter presented his value. It does not require THE FF… EXPRESS to convert an unresolved question into a proven crime, and it does not require us to pretend the message doesn’t exist because its political implications are uncomfortable.

Another famous CEFC communication concerned a proposed ownership structure. A May 2017 email included the phrase “10 held by H for the big guy?” Tony Bobulinski, who participated in discussions about the proposed venture, later testified that “the big guy” referred to Joe Biden. The email describes a proposed structure, and the available financial evidence does not establish that the contemplated ten-percent interest was ultimately transferred as described. That is where the evidence currently stops. Our job is not to push it farther simply because doing so would produce a more dramatic headline.

But China leaves us with an extraordinary amount that does not require speculation at all: approximately $4.8 million paid to entities controlled by Hunter and James Biden over fourteen months. 

Then the money trail moves to Romania, but before we go there, the ledger below provides a cleaner picture of the payments associated with Hunter Biden’s Burisma and China relationships, including the separate $1 million legal retainer Hunter Biden received to represent CEFC executive Patrick Ho.

| **Deal**               | **Hunter**                                     | **Other payment**                                                                                  |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Burisma — Ukraine**  | ≈ **$65K/month** by Hunter’s later description | Earlier records show ≈ **$83K each** associated with Hunter & Archer through Rosemont Seneca Bohai |
| **CEFC — China**       | **$500K initial + $100K/month**                | **James Biden: $65K/month**                                                                        |
| **Patrick Ho — China** | **$1 million legal retainer**                  | Separate CEFC-related legal representation                                                         |

**ROMANIA:**  
The Romanian chapter is less familiar to many Americans, but it belongs squarely inside the Golden Goose story.

Hunter Biden and his associates became involved with Gabriel Popoviciu, a wealthy Romanian businessman facing a corruption prosecution in his home country. Federal prosecutors later described Hunter’s work involving Popoviciu in the indictment underlying Hunter’s tax case. Congressional investigators separately reconstructed payments from Popoviciu through business associate Rob Walker’s company and onward to Hunter and other recipients. Because some of the most aggressive descriptions of the arrangement come from Republican-led congressional investigations, those descriptions need to remain attributed rather than quietly transformed into findings by THE FF… EXPRESS.

But there is a broader fact that became central to the federal tax investigation: investigators examined Hunter’s income from **Ukraine, China and Romania**, and the eventual tax prosecution concerned millions of dollars of income received during this period. Special Counsel Weiss’s final report states that Hunter received more than **$7 million in gross income from 2016 through October 15, 2020,** including roughly $1.5 million in 2016, $2.3 million in 2017, $2.1 million in 2018, $1 million in 2019 and $188,000 through mid-October 2020\. 

**That number deserves to sit there for a second: more than $7 million in gross income from 2016 through October 15, 2020.**

Weiss ultimately concluded that Hunter’s lucrative opportunities included his Burisma board seat and his Chinese joint venture and explicitly connected those opportunities to Hunter’s surname and connections. That is the special counsel’s conclusion, not ours, but it comes from the prosecutor who spent years investigating Hunter’s finances and ultimately obtained his guilty plea on all nine tax counts. 

By now, the Golden Goose has become considerably easier to see. Ukraine produced substantial board compensation. China produced millions through consulting arrangements and a legal retainer. Romania produced another stream of foreign business income under circumstances that later attracted both prosecutorial and congressional scrutiny.

Ukraine, China and Romania were not the only foreign relationships examined by investigators. Congressional investigators also scrutinized transactions involving business associates and individuals from Kazakhstan and Russia. Those relationships do not all represent money paid directly to Hunter Biden, and THE FF… EXPRESS is not going to inflate this article by pretending they do. But they are part of the larger network of foreign business relationships surrounding Hunter and his partners during this period, and they belong on the record.

**THE ART GALLERY:**  
Hunter Biden began painting seriously during his recovery from addiction and eventually entered the commercial art market through New York gallery owner Georges Bergès. There is nothing inherently suspicious about changing careers, discovering art later in life or selling paintings. The numbers, however, were extraordinary for an artist entering the commercial market for the first time.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/78/30/78308d04-6823-49fc-9ec6-845de1e13b1f/content/images/2026/09/Hunter-Biden---the-Artist-1.jpg)

Ten buyers purchased approximately **$1.5 million** worth of Hunter Biden’s art. Under his arrangement with Bergès, Hunter received approximately sixty percent — about $900,000 — while the gallery received approximately forty percent, about $600,000\. The largest purchaser was Kevin Morris, the wealthy entertainment attorney who had also become Hunter’s friend, lawyer and financial benefactor. Morris purchased eleven paintings valued at approximately **$875,000**. 

Another buyer was Democratic donor Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who purchased two works, one for approximately $52,000 and another for approximately $42,000\. Joe Biden appointed Naftali to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad in 2022\. The timing understandably attracted scrutiny, but the existence of an art purchase followed by or surrounding a political appointment does not itself establish that one was exchanged for the other. The purchases and appointment are documented; a quid pro quo has not been established by that chronology alone. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/78/30/78308d04-6823-49fc-9ec6-845de1e13b1f/content/images/2026/09/Hunter-Biden---Elizabeth-Hirsh-Naftali---Keving-Moris-1.jpg)

The Morris purchases are especially interesting because Morris was simultaneously financing Hunter’s life.

In congressional testimony, Morris agreed that he had loaned Hunter approximately **$4.9 million between 2020 and 2022** to cover taxes and personal expenses. Subsequent documentation submitted by Morris’s attorneys detailed multimillion-dollar loan agreements with repayment schedules extending into later years. Morris testified that he expected repayment and denied receiving a favor or benefit from Joe Biden or his administration in exchange for lending Hunter money. 

So by the time we arrive at the art gallery, something has changed in the Golden Goose story. Earlier, Hunter Biden was generating enormous amounts of money. Now someone else was helping keep him financially afloat.

**WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL THE MONEY GO?**  
Because while millions of dollars were coming in, an astonishing amount of money was going out.

The federal tax prosecution provides the clearest accounting. The Justice Department alleged that Hunter spent millions on an extravagant lifestyle while failing to pay at least **$1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes for tax** years 2016 through 2019\. In September 2024, Hunter pleaded guilty to all nine counts in the federal tax indictment — three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanors — without a plea agreement. The charges included tax evasion, filing false returns, failure to file and failure to pay. 

The government’s case described enormous personal expenditures during those years, including money spent on drugs, escorts, hotels, cars, clothing and other expenses while federal taxes went unpaid. Hunter’s addiction during this period was severe, something he has described extensively himself, and it plainly contributed to the destruction unfolding around him. But addiction does not make the financial record irrelevant. The point here is not to turn Hunter’s lowest moments into entertainment. It is to understand how someone earning millions of dollars eventually reached a point where other people were paying obligations he could no longer meet.

And one of those obligations involved a child.

Hunter Biden fathered a daughter with Lunden Roberts in 2018\. After paternity was established through DNA testing, years of litigation followed over paternity and child support. Hunter was at one point ordered to pay $20,000 per month and later returned to court seeking a reduction, arguing that his financial circumstances had deteriorated. A 2023 settlement reduced his obligation under terms that were not fully disclosed and included an unusual provision involving paintings that his daughter could retain or sell.

There is no reason to drag the child herself into a political fight. **She didn’t choose any of this**. What belongs in Golden Goose is the financial contradiction surrounding her support: the man who had generated millions of dollars through foreign business relationships, consulting arrangements, legal retainers and other ventures eventually found himself in court arguing that his finances had changed enough that his child-support obligation should be reduced.

And while Hunter’s own ability to pay was deteriorating, Kevin Morris increasingly entered the picture.

Morris met Hunter in late 2019\. Within the following years, he was financing millions of dollars in tax payments and personal expenditures. Morris’s congressional testimony confirmed approximately $4.9 million in loans through 2022, and later congressional materials described the total financial support as exceeding $6.5 million. Because that larger figure comes from Republican congressional investigators, it should be presented as their accounting rather than ours unless we independently reconstruct every subsequent advance. What is not disputed is the scale: **millions of dollars**. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/78/30/78308d04-6823-49fc-9ec6-845de1e13b1f/content/images/2026/09/Hunter-Biden---Kevin-Moris--Lawyer--2.jpg)

Morris’s money helped cover tax liabilities and personal expenses. Congressional records also describe payments connected to Hunter’s former wife and to Lunden Roberts. Morris bought Hunter’s art. He became one of Hunter’s attorneys and closest friends. What had begun as Hunter Biden attracting millions from people who wanted to do business with him had evolved into Hunter Biden relying heavily on one wealthy individual to help support the financial structure around his life.

That is where the title of this story finally earns itself.

**The Golden Goose was fucking exhausted.** Hunter Biden had gone from receiving extraordinary compensation through international business relationships to confronting unpaid taxes, addiction, legal costs, child-support obligations and personal expenses that increasingly required outside financial support. According to Weiss’s final report, Hunter received more than $7 million in gross income between 2016 and October 2020, in addition to approximately $1.2 million in financial support from a personal friend during 2020 alone. Yet he had simultaneously failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes during the period ultimately covered by his criminal case. 

None of that requires us to decide that every dollar Hunter Biden ever earned was illegitimate. That would go farther than the evidence permits. He was a lawyer, investor, consultant and corporate board member who performed actual professional work. But the evidence also gives us something we shouldn’t sanitize: Hunter Biden’s surname and connections had commercial value. Devon Archer described the “brand.” Hunter himself acknowledged that his surname opened doors. And Special Counsel Weiss ultimately wrote that Hunter used his last name and connections to obtain lucrative opportunities. 

So perhaps the question **“What was Hunter Biden being paid for?”** does not have one clean answer. Sometimes he was being paid for legal work. Sometimes he was being paid for consulting. Sometimes he was being paid to sit on a corporate board. Sometimes he was selling a painting. Sometimes the people paying him were plainly purchasing his professional participation in a business arrangement. And sometimes, sitting beside all of those things, was the Biden name.

THE FF… EXPRESS does not need to manufacture the rest of the answer. We can put the contracts, bank records, testimony, payments and chronology on the table and allow the reader to see exactly where the evidence ends and the unanswered questions begin.

But there is another enormous collection of records sitting underneath much of this story. Emails. Messages. Photographs. Financial documents. Business communications. Proposed deals. Personal conversations. Years of Hunter Biden’s life preserved inside a computer that would become one of the most politically radioactive pieces of evidence in modern American politics.

The computer itself became a story before most Americans ever had a chance to understand what was actually on it.  
And that is our next fucking stop.

**THE RECEIPTS** 
**DON’T TAKE OUR FUCKING WORD FOR IT. READ THE RECEIPTS.**

**FFE: THE STRONGEST PRIMARY RECORD FOR HUNTER BIDEN'S TAX HISTORY** is the Justice Department’s prosecution record. Hunter pleaded guilty to all nine tax counts in September 2024, and Special Counsel Weiss’s final report subsequently laid out Hunter’s income, tax liabilities and the prosecutor’s conclusions about how he obtained lucrative business opportunities.   
[Justice Department — Hunter Biden tax case.](https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco-weiss/pr/robert-hunter-biden-convicted-three-felony-tax-offenses-and-six-misdemeanor-tax-offenses?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)  
[Special Counsel Weiss — Final Report. ](https://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Weiss-January-2025.pdf?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)  
**FFE: UKRAINE , Devon Archer’s complete congressional transcript** is particularly valuable because it contains both the Burisma compensation evidence and Archer’s own description of the Biden “brand,” rather than somebody else’s characterization of his testimony.   
**FFE: BURISMA AND FOREIGN BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS —** A 2020 majority-staff report from the Senate Homeland Security and Finance Committees examined Hunter Biden’s Burisma position, concerns raised by U.S. officials about potential conflicts of interest, and financial transactions involving Hunter, his family and business associates. Because the report was produced by Republican committee leadership, THE FF… EXPRESS treats its political conclusions as attributed findings while using the underlying testimony and documents as additional evidence. [House Oversight — Devon Archer transcript and materials. ](https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-releases-devon-archers-transcribed-interview-transcript/?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)**FFE: CHINA, The Washington Pos**t reconstructed the CEFC transactions using bank statements, government records, court documents, agreements and electronic communications, documenting approximately $4.8 million paid to entities controlled by Hunter and James Biden.   
[The Washington Post — CEFC money trail. ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-china-laptop/?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)  
**FFE: ART SALES,** reporting based on Georges Bergès’s congressional testimony documents approximately $1.5 million in total sales, including Kevin Morris’s approximately $875,000 in purchases.   
[The Washington Post — Hunter Biden art sales. ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/23/hunter-biden-paintings-sold-15-million/?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)  
**FFE: KEVIN MORRIS**, his actual congressional transcript confirms the multimillion-dollar financial relationship and records his testimony about why he made the loans and whether he expected government benefits in return.   
[House Oversight — Kevin Morris transcript.](https://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-judiciary-and-ways-and-means-committees-release-kevin-morris-transcript/?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)  
**FFE: HOUSE OVERSIGHT** — Chairman James Comer’s account of payments involving Hunter, James and Joe Biden. The committee characterizes the transaction as “laundered China money”; that characterization is the committee chairman’s allegation. [House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.](https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-reveals-how-joe-biden-received-laundered-china-money/?ref=the-ff-express.ghost.io)  
**FFE:** Read the **interview with Anthony "Tony" Bubulinski**. [FBI Interview /ANTHONY “TONY” BOBULINSKI](https://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/T58-Exhibit-400A-Anthony-Bobulinski-302-Interview-Memo%5FRedacted.pdf?ref=the-ff-express.ghost.io).   
**FFE: Law and Crime Article**. Did Biden Brag On Camera About Getting Ukrainian Prosecutor Fired? [Joe BIden on Ukrain Prosecutor getting fired.](https://nevinlawgroup.com/did-biden-brag-on-camera-about-getting-ukrainian.html?ref=the-ff-express.ghost.io)  
**FFE:** Congress.gov /USA Today: **Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor** because he didn't pursue corruption cases. [congress.gov - USA Today - Politics - Biden/Ukranian prosecutor.](https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110331/documents/HMKP-116-JU00-20191211-SD440.pdf?ref=the-ff-express.ghost.io)  
**FFE:** Hunter Biden - Burisma/US Senate Committee: [**US Senate Committee/Hunter Biden - Burisma**](https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/HSGAC%5FFinance%5FReport%5FFINAL.pdf?ref=the-ff-express.ghost.io)

**THE FF...EXPRESS LET’S LOOK DEEPER.** 
  
**READ THE NEXT ARTICLE:** 
  
***THE LAPTOP FROM HELL* — And The Story America Almost Didn't Get To Read:** Hunter Biden and The Laptop From Hell.