To listen to Democrats, Joe Biden is as innocent of influence peddling in Ukraine as Donald Trump is guilty. Never mind the widely circulated video of Biden’s boasting that he had threatened to withhold a billion-dollar U.S. aid package unless then-Ukrainian Pres. Petro Poroshenko fired a prosecutor looking into his son Hunter’s role as a board member of gas company Burisma. And never mind that the Left’s companion story about Trump having pressured current Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky to reopen the investigation is full of holes. (RELATED: Why is Biden keeping mum about the Ukraine ‘scandal’ in which he is a key player?)
No doubt that football will be batted back and forth again and again between now and Election Day, but NBC Today featured a story this morning about the other Hunter Biden Asia deal. That was the trip the then-vice president’s son took aboard Air Force 2 in 2013 from which he returned with $1.5 billion of cash from a Chinese banker for the equity fund he was starting up.
Hot Air’s Morrissey writes of the video clip of the show that follows that while it “sounds more like a scolding fact-check, it also acknowledges that Hunter Biden’s decision to piggyback on his dad’s state visit to China to work on his own business deal seems a little odd in retrospect. Reporter Josh Lederman cuts back across the grain to note that Hunter’s presence on the VP’s Air Force Two flight didn’t seem unusual, but that reporters didn’t know he was negotiating with bankers in China for his own profit either.”…
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“While Donald Trump’s specific claims about the amounts and dates appear to be false, there’s no avoiding the conclusion that Hunter Biden used Joe Biden’s official trip to China for his personal enrichment. Worse yet, as Lederman reports separately today, it also leaves the distinct impression that Joe Biden was a participant in his son’s efforts to cash in on his father’s office.”…
Watch:
Hunter Biden’s business deals during his father’s time as vice president are drawing new scrutiny – a 2013 trip to China is getting new attention because then-Vice President Biden brought Hunter on the official visit, @halliejackson reports. pic.twitter.com/tDPsWr1hRd
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 2, 2019
While the former vice president has claimed repeatedly that he had no knowledge of his son’s dealings with Burisma — which sounds pretty far-fetched — it would seem downright bizarre for him to claim no awareness of the China venture since he was on the same Air Force 2 flight to China on official government business.
