STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The journalist Kenneth P. Vogel is an investigative reporter, which means he often writes about people who would rather he did not. Vogel works for The New York Times, and his book called "Devils' Advocates" covers Americans who take money from foreigners to advise them about the U.S. government.
Did you receive anything you would regard as a threatening letter or phone call while reporting on the subjects of this book?
KENNETH VOGEL: Yes, many. I don't want to get into the specifics.
INSKEEP: The book's many characters include some famous ones, but Vogel makes a point about how Washington works that is larger than any individual. We began our talk with Hunter Biden, President Biden's son. He's already famous for working for Burisma, an energy firm in Ukraine. But Vogel says that's not all.
What have you found out that wasn't known?
VOGEL: This was sort of a pattern where he was going around the world, seeking business and, in some cases, entering business relationships with foreign interests who were targets of U.S.-encouraged anti-corruption initiatives. So that was certainly the case with Burisma. Another case where we found this was in Romania, where he was working for a Romanian real estate developer who was being prosecuted by anti-corruption prosecutors in Bucharest who were supported by the U.S. government.
INSKEEP: And is it your understanding, suspicion, belief - whatever the right word is - that the Romanians thought that by hiring Hunter Biden, they had a chance to get the U.S. government off their back?
VOGEL: Yeah. And in fact, that is my conclusion, but it's also the conclusion of the prosecutors in the tax case against Hunter Biden, who suggested that there was evidence that would allow them to potentially bring charges of violations of foreign lobbying rules against Hunter Biden for this work that he was doing, which the prosecutors seem to have concluded was intended to influence the U.S. government to back down the Romanian prosecutors.
INSKEEP: Is this in any way the normal way that Washington has traditionally worked? You hire somebody who is close to the people in power, who will make sure that they understand, so to speak, your point of view.
VOGEL: Yes. This has been ongoing for quite some time, and in fact, even examples of hiring the families of the president is not something that is totally new. We had - the adult sons, obviously, of President Trump have entered into arrangements with foreign business interests. The son and brother of former President Jimmy Carter were involved with foreign interests during Jimmy Carter's presidency. So this is not new.
INSKEEP: One other aspect of this to ask about, of course, is President Biden himself. In the past two presidential campaigns, Hunter Biden's activities featured prominently, and the defense of the Biden campaign was that Hunter Biden may have done some unsavory things. He may have even had conversations with his father about them. But ultimately, his father did nothing corrupted - nothing particularly for his son. Do you find that to be correct?
VOGEL: Yes. I find it correct that there's no evidence that he intentionally used the levers of government to try to effectuate a result that would have been for his son, that would have benefited one of his son's clients because his son had this business relationship. That said, he was used by his son and his son's partners to try to facilitate these business deals. He was introduced in a way that clearly would send a signal to them that, like, Hunter Biden could be the facilitator that would help them get the result that they wanted from Washington.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about one other famous figure - Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, longtime adviser to President Trump. And here again, much is publicly known. Giuliani's trips to Ukraine were quite famous. But what else did you find that was not known about Giuliani's business activities?
VOGEL: We found that at the same time as he was sort of shaping U.S. foreign policy under the - you know, the first Trump administration as kind of, like, a shadow secretary of state, he was going around the world also seeking, like, rather large paydays from a number of interests that are not necessarily aligned with the United States. There was one instance that I detail in the book where he had sought a $5 million contract with an Israeli firm that was working on behalf of the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo under the former president, Joseph Kabila, who the U.S. had tried to remove from power for many years because they saw him as corrupt and brutal. Rudy Giuliani did not get that contract signed.
There was another contract that he sought and did get signed from the Bahraini government. I don't know the ultimate amount that he was paid, but the invoice that I obtained that he submitted to the Bahraini government was for $2 million. This was in 2018.
INSKEEP: When you go through this list of apparent transactions, I suppose Giuliani can say and may well have said to you, listen, I did something for the money. Like, for the $2 million from Bahrain. What was he doing for the money, according to him?
VOGEL: Well, in a lot of these cases, what he said was that he was providing strategic advice on security. So, like, not lobbying. And he made very clear, like, I'm not lobbying. All I'm doing is providing them advice about how they can beef up their security procedures or do infrastructure projects in their parts of the world. Certainly in the contracts that I've seen, that is the statement that is articulated. But I've also talked to enough people who were on the other end of these contracts that they saw Rudy Giuliani as a liaison to Trump. And that's how they view their engagement with him, even if he insisted otherwise.
INSKEEP: Has President Trump become his own middleman? By which I mean he goes to the Middle East and comes away with a $400 million plane. He attends a cryptocurrency dinner, and people are buying his meme coin. He maybe doesn't need a middleman.
VOGEL: Yeah. I think there's an element of that for sure. That said, his family or, you know, particularly his sons are sort of the middlemen, and they are the ones who are technically running the cryptocurrency businesses. And they are the ones who are in these places at these crypto conferences in Dubai, where there are large deals inked between the UAE sovereign wealth fund and Binance, a foreign cryptocurrency exchange, that are going to be financed by World Liberty Financial. There's an element of that for sure. However, there's also this element of people who are his friends and relatives and cronies, like Steve Witkoff, who are functioning in a way that is sort of middlemen and liaisons.
INSKEEP: So you've talked about the Bidens. You've talked about people around Trump. When you report all this, do you ever get angry about any of it?
VOGEL: It's not angry, but there's an element of cynicism, where I'm always looking for the financial motive or the political motive. And I'm always questioning whether something that is being done and that is being cast as in the best interests of the United States of America is actually driven by something entirely different.
INSKEEP: Kenneth P. Vogel is the author of "Devils' Advocates: The Hidden Story Of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden And The Washington Insiders On The Payrolls Of Corrupt Foreign Interests." Thanks so much.
VOGEL: Yeah. It was a pleasure, Steve.
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INSKEEP: Now, we mentioned prosecutors' allegations that Hunter Biden violated foreign lobbying laws for his business dealings in Romania. His case ended before those allegations were proven in court. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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