Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Iowa Federation of Labor convention, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2019, in Altoona, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Joe Biden has consistently denied that there was anything shady about his son Hunter's job at Burisma. It has become increasingly clear that there was a corrupt arrangement going on, and it's also obvious that Joe Biden knows this, which is why he's repeatedly denied any knowledge of Hunter's business dealings.
Biden is still repeating the claim that everything was above board with Hunter's Burisma position. “No one has suggested my son did anything wrong,”
The Washington Post noted that earlier this week that Biden was aggressively defending Hunter, referring to him as “my only surviving son” in reference his older son Beau, who died in 2015. An obvious attempt to generate sympathy in light of the attacks on Hunter's shady business dealings.
“No one has suggested my son did anything wrong,” Biden said. “There’s nobody that’s indicated there’s a single solitary thing that he did that was inappropriate, wrong . . . or anything other than the appearance. It looked bad that he was there,” Biden said. “He acknowledges that he in fact made a mistake going on the board.”
On Friday, Jonathan Turley called Biden out over his repeated denials and weak defenses of his son's business dealings. "Joe Biden continues to maintain that 'no one' has accused his son of wrongdoing when there is a chorus of such allegations," Turley said. "He seems to be drawing a distinction between what is criminal and what is not — as if the criminal code is the only measure of wrongdoing or unethical conduct." But, as Turley notes, "Hunter Biden not only clearly engaged in influence-peddling but he is clearly a relevant witness."
But perhaps the most interesting thing about Biden's recent comments is that he acknowledges it "looked bad that he was there." Doesn't that seem to suggest that an investigation is necessary? Democrats argued that the call between Trump and Zelenksy looked bad, and required an investigation.
And the truth is there's plenty of reason to believe that Biden's position didn't just "look bad." Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma while his son was on the board—and that prosecutor confirmed that Biden's pressure was responsible for his dismissal. But, Burisma was still involved in shady deals, and Ukrainian officials had opened a new investigation of Burisma months before Trump's infamous call with Zelensky. There is also evidence that Burisma leveraged Hunter Biden's position on the board to pressure the Obama administration to quash corruption allegations against them.
It doesn't take an advanced degree to realize something shady was going on with Hunter Biden getting a cushy job making $80,000 a month to sit on the board of a business he knew nothing about at the same time the company was pressuring the Obama administration to quash an investigation into their corruption—which they successfully did.
Biden is clearly in denial.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
