What really happened in Ukraine with Hunter and Joe Biden: Exclusive Miranda Devine book excerpt

Hunter Biden’s abandoned MacBook was a window into the Biden family business, a secret international influence peddling operation.New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, who exposed many of Hunter’s secrets in her book “Laptop from Hell,” returns with “The Big Guy,” the story of how the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the IRS and the Department of Justice conspired to protect Joe Biden and his family.

Here, in a second exclusive excerpt, she explains the Ukrainian intrigue that surrounded Joe and Hunter:Hunter Biden was invited to join the Burisma board at the Italian resort of Lake Como, where he had flown with his best friend and business partner Devon Archer in April 2014 to a management conference at the Villa d’Este, a sumptuous haunt of Russian oligarchs overlooking the water.It was six weeks after the collapse of Viktor Yanukovych’s government in Ukraine, and Hunter and Archer joked in emails before they arrived that they were living like the fictional spies, James Bond and Jason Bourne: “Might be very Bond/Bourne to get the ’gharchs [oligarchs] up at the lake for a meeting,” Archer wrote.They had a meeting scheduled with Russia’s richest woman, Elena Baturina, who had just wired $3.5 million to their firm, Rosemont Seneca Thornton. The next day, Hunter met Burisma official Vadym Pozharskyi for the first time. According to Archer, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, 48, asked Hunter to join the Burisma board during a walk by the lake.“I am strongly leaning towards agreeing to board position.Let’s decide this and move on it by Monday,” Hunter emailed Archer a few days later.Hunter wanted the board seat — and the $83,333 a month payment that came with it — but he needed Burisma to hide his involvement to avoid bad optics for his father. Pozharskyi pushed back firmly in an email: “I do believe that we have to reach reasonable balance here,” he told Archer.

“Taking into account the political weight of our Directors we...