(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that Chinas Xi Jinping should consider investigating Joe Biden and his son after again calling on Ukraines president to re-open an investigation into one of his top political rivals.
China should start an investigation into the Bidens, Trump told reporters Thursday as he left the White House. Because what happened in China was just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.
Trumps remarks came after he reiterated his call for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to start an investigation of the Bidens. Trumps allegation that Joe Biden, as vice president, tried to shield his son Hunter from a Ukrainian investigation of a company that employed him, has been discredited.
The U.S. House has begun an inquiry into impeaching Trump over his conduct in a July 25 telephone call with Zelenskiy. After freezing military aid to Ukraine, which is battling a Russia-backed insurgency, the U.S. president asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, and encouraged him to work on the matter with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr.
I would say that President Zelenskiy, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens, Trump said Thursday. Because nobody has any doubts that they werent crooked.
Bidens campaign dismissed Trumps remarks as without merit.
Donald Trump is flailing and melting down on national television, desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organizations, said Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield in a statement. It could not be more transparent: Donald Trump is terrified that Joe Biden will beat him like a drum.
Also Thursday, Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat who is chair of the Federal Election Commission, retweeted a statement she originally made in June about electoral intervention from foreign governments.
Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election, she said.
On China, Trump suggested that the Bidens may be the reason Beijing has such a sweetheart deal, that for so many years theyve been ripping off our country. Trump didnt elaborate but often says China is ripping off the U.S. in trade — the predicate for his ongoing trade war with Beijing.
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Speaking to the media in September, Trump alluded to his suspicions about Biden and China: When Bidens son walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund, and the biggest funds in the world cant get money out of China, and hes there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think thats a horrible thing.
Implicit in Trumps statements is that Joe Biden used his position to encourage Chinese officials to benefit his sons business dealings involving a private-equity venture in the country. Not only has no evidence emerged of the vice presidents intervention, but its unclear whether Hunter Biden derived any financial benefit from the venture in the first place.
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday backed Trumps comments on China and the Bidens.
The American people have a right to know if the vice president of the United States or his family profited from his position as vice president during the last administration, Pence told reporters in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are legitimate questions that ought to be asked and were going to continue to ask them.
Trumps assertions about China appear to originate from a 2018 book, Secret Empires, by the conservative author Peter Schweizer.
The book highlights how then-Vice President Biden took his son on a diplomatic trip to China in December 2013, and that around the same time, major Chinese companies formed a private-equity venture with which Hunter Biden was affiliated. The private-equity firm, known as Bohai Harvest RST, originally planned to raise $1 billion and later aimed for $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2014. This appears to be the amount of money the firm planned to invest on behalf of clients, not the value of the firm itself.
Hunter Biden was on the board of BHR from the outset, but he did not own an equity stake in the company until October 2017, after his father had left office, George Mesires, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, told Politifact. Mesires said Hunter Bidens capital commitment in the venture is $420,000 and he has not received any earnings from the investment. He also said Hunter Biden was not paid for his service as a board member.
Corporate records retrieved in China in May showed BHR had paid-in capital of about $4 million.
(Updates with Pence comments starting in 13th paragraph.)
–With assistance from Josh Wingrove.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at [email protected];Zachary R. Mider in New York at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at [email protected], Justin Blum, Joshua Gallu
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