CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Joe Biden blasted President Trump for claiming the former vice president had pressured the Ukrainian government on behalf of his lobbyist son Hunter.
“Not one single outlet has given any credibility to his assertion. Not one single one. And so I have no comment except the president should start to be president,” Biden, 76, told reporters in Iowa on Friday afternoon.
Trump said that Biden, when vice president, had “talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country [Ukraine] unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case.”
The president’s comments came after a standoff between White House and Congress over a whistleblower allegation that Trump urged the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son.
In response to the allegation that Trump pressured Ukraine, Biden said it is “concerning to me that a president would do something like that.”
“It’s totally inappropriate for a president to try to get a foreign leader to say something that is untrue about any political opponent,” Biden told Iowa Starting Line. “I’ve never heard of it before. I’ve never heard of it before. But I think that Congress is looking into it, and I think they should.”
On Friday morning, Trump addressed the controversy to reporters, saying “it doesn’t matter” if he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into Hunter Biden.
“It doesn’t matter what I discussed, but I will say this: Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement because it was disgraceful where he talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case,” Trump said “So somebody ought to look into that.”
Trump appeared to be referring to a statement Biden made in January 2018, where he boasted to members of a panel hosted by the Council of Foreign Relations that he ordered the Ukranian government to fire a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, that was facing corruption allegations or the White House would reneg on a commitment to provide aid.
“I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired,” Biden said.
At the time of Biden’s comments, Shokin was in the middle of a criminal investigation into the natural gas company Bursima, where Hunter Biden served on the board and earned a salary of up to $50,000 a month. Both Bidens have denied any conflicts of interests.
Documents uncovered by the Washington Examiner showed that then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson cut ties over Hunter Biden because of the ordeal. The decision of Hunter Biden to join Burisma caused the Obama administration to frantically run damage control, with many officials calling the move an unforced effort for a White House that touted its alleged clean record when it came to scandals.
Hunter Biden stepped down from his role at Bursima this year, before his father’s third White House run.
