Joe Biden said at a campaign stop over the weekend that he had never talked to his son Hunter about Hunter’s business dealings in the Ukraine, but previous comments by the younger Biden contradict that statement, Breitbart News reports.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Joe Biden told reporters in anger. He then went on to accuse President Donald Trump of urging the Ukrainian government to investigate the situation, calling it an abuse of power.
In June, however, Hunter Biden gave interviews to the New Yorker in which he said his father did speak to him about his overseas business holdings. “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do,’” Hunter Biden told the magazine.
The issue was raised after a whistleblower filed a complaint against Trump for a phone call in which he allegedly pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate the Bidens over a business deal made there.
Ukraine connections
As it turns out, the whistleblower didn’t even have direct knowledge of the phone call in question. The complaint also doesn’t follow intelligence protocol. As former congressman Trey Gowdy pointed out last night on Fox News, you can’t use anonymous sources in a courtroom.
The episode raised significant questions about the Bidens, namely whether there was a scandal in the way Hunter Biden handled his business dealings – and what Joe Biden knew about it.
It just so happens that in 2014, Hunter Biden was given a position on the board of Bursima Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, even though he had no experience with Ukraine or the energy industry.
At the same time, Joe Biden was then-President Obama’s point person for relations with Ukraine. Coincidence? I think not.
Pressure? What pressure?
The claim that Trump offered Ukraine a quid pro quo to investigate Biden and son is being disputed by Trump – and Ukraine. What isn’t being disputed is the allegation that Biden pressured a prosecutor in Ukraine to stop investigating Bursima in 2016 while his son was involved with the company.
Turns out the founder of Bursima, Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, was suspected of laundering money through the business and using his office to decide who got oil and gas licenses. Zlochevsky and Bursima were being investigated by Ukranian prosecutor Victor Shokin. Although the evidence of corruption was strong, then-Vice President Joe Biden leveraged a threat he said came from Obama to hold back $1 billion-plus in loans to Ukraine if they didn’t fire Shokin.
The end result was that Ukraine folded and Zlochevsky ended up back in Ukraine like nothing ever happened. Shokin was fired, and Hunter Biden remained on Bursima’s board. No one really looked into it much until it looked like Trump might have done something wrong.
As usual, it seems like the Trump-haters snared some of their own in the trap they laid for Trump.
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