Joe Biden didn’t waste any time trying to make his Ukraine scandal all about President Trump.
Uncle Joe claimed that Trump is trying to “smear” him and called it “a tragedy for this country” that Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate him and his son Hunter.
Biden takes cover
Last year, Biden boasted that while he was vice president, he arranged to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired who was involved in investigating a nuclear company, Burisma Holdings, in which his son was a stakeholder. Hunter Biden was earning an estimated $50,000 monthly salary, despite having no known connections in Ukraine or any discernibly relevant experience in the region. At the time Hunter was doing business in Ukraine, his father just happened to be President Obama’s point man for Kiev.
For months, Biden’s Ukraine scandal received muted attention — until an anonymous “whistleblower” complaint emerged, and a meltdown in Washington ensued, leading the Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Trump over a July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Now, Joe Biden is taking cover behind the phony “whistleblower” scandal to attack Trump and deflect from his own dubious dealings. After Trump released the transcript of his phone call Wednesday, Biden joined the chorus of Democrats claiming that it was “damning” proof of treason by the president of the United States.
In the phone call, Trump asked Zelensky for a “favor,” namely that he look into Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm that Democrats hired to investigate Russian hacks — not that Zelensky investigate Biden. It was not until after Zelensky made mention of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani that the president asked him to work with Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr to also take a second look at the Biden case. Significantly, there is no discussion of a quid pro quo pertaining to military aid to Ukraine, which Democrats say Trump froze in order to coerce action by Zelensky.
“The 2,000-word summation of a 30-minute phone call released by the White House makes clear that days after the President ordered the delay of Congressionally-appropriated military assistance to Ukraine, he implored the President of Ukraine to work with his personal attorney to manufacture a smear against a domestic political opponent, using a malicious conspiracy theory that has been universally debunked by every independent outlet that has looked at it,” Biden asserted.
The former VP was careful to emphasize that Trump’s call came “days after” Trump ordered the aid frozen. Since there was no actual quid pro quo, as Democrats promised would be revealed, Biden is trying to manufacture an implied one. Trump, however, did not “manufacture” a “malicious conspiracy theory,” as even the New York Times has questioned what the Bidens were doing in Ukraine.
Dems run interference for Biden, attack Trump
Now, House Democrats have marshaled sufficient support for the launch of an impeachment inquiry. While falling short of specifically calling for Trump’s impeachment, Biden has endorsed the idea of Democrats holding him “accountable.”
“Congress must pursue the facts and quickly take prompt action to hold Donald Trump accountable,” he said. “In the meantime, I will continue to focus my campaign not on how Donald Trump abused his power to come after my family, but on how he has turned his back on America’s families.”
At this stage, there is really no way for Uncle Joe to escape unscathed — but he’s doing what he can to mitigate the damage. When confronted about the scandal Saturday, Biden grew irate and told reporters they needed to “ask the right questions” — presumably, only those having to do with Trump. Luckily for him, the Fake News is on his side and the Democrats are circling the wagons as well. Ironically, Biden threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine if they didn’t fire the prosecutor, and he literally bragged in the open about having proffered such a quid pro quo. But Democrats insist that Trump’s phone call is the problem.
Since the inception of this scandal, the left has shown bad faith. Immediately after Trump released the phone call transcript, Democrats shifted the goal posts and demanded the full whistleblower complaint. On Thursday, Trump released the complaint — which is anonymous, unverified and based on secondhand knowledge of Trump’s phone call — prompting Democrats to bemoan its “deeply disturbing” content.
Indeed, it is deeply disturbing that Trump paid for a salacious dossier of Russian gossip about his political opponent and leaked it to allies in the intelligence community to justify spying on Biden’s political campaign. Oh, wait — that was Hillary Clinton. But enough about that. Let’s focus on the real scandal. If we’re keeping score, it’s not a tragedy that a former vice president may well have leveraged his power to score business for his coke fiend son, but it is a tragedy that the president of the United States wanted said dealings investigated. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.
No comments: