Biden defends Hunter: ‘My son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong.’
October 15, 2019
Joe Biden defended his son’s decision to join the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company while he was vice president, saying both he and his son “did nothing wrong.”
“My son did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong,” Biden said on the Democratic debate stage on Tuesday when asked about his son’s business dealings. “I carried out the policy of the United States in rooting out corruption in Ukraine.”
Biden then pivoted to the impeachment inquiry involving President Donald Trump’s July phone call with newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in which he pressured him to investigate the Bidens. Biden said Trump did so because if he were to receive the Democratic nomination, Biden would “beat him like a drum.”
“What I think is important is we focus on why it's so important to remove this man from office,” he said on stage at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio. “This president on three occasions, three occasions, has invited foreign governments and heads of government to get engaged in trying to alter our elections. The fact is that it is outrageous.”
In an effort to push back on Trump’s attacks on the Biden family and unsubstantiated claims of corruption, Hunter Biden appeared on Good Morning America Tuesday morning to vehemently dispute accusations that he or his father did anything improper when it came to his business dealings in Ukraine and China.
Though he affirmed his father’s assertions that there were no discussions between the two of Hunter’s foreign business dealings, he did concede to showing "poor judgment" in working with foreign companies while his father was in office.
Nevertheless, Hunter Biden defended both his former positions on the boards of a Ukrainian natural gas company and of a China-based investment firm. Biden resigned from the latter over the weekend, pledging to not work for any foreign entities if his father wins the White House next year.
“I made a mistake, in retrospect, as it related to creating any perception that it was wrong, and so, therefore, I'm taking it off the table," he said in the interview that aired Tuesday. "I'm making that commitment. We'll see if anybody else makes that commitment, but that's the commitment I'm making."
Source: https://www.politico.com/