Former Vice President Joe Biden pushed back on Today host Savannah Guthrie during an interview on Monday where she asked him about his son Hunter Biden‘s past business dealings with Ukraine.
Vice President Biden was unhappy with Guthrie’s framing of her question.
Hunter, who had a lucrative job on the board of a Ukraine energy company while his dad was in office and helping shape American policy toward Ukraine, has been pulled into the center of President Donald Trump‘s impeachment.
Conservatives including Trump allies and allegedly Trump himself had been looking for dirt around Hunter’s work in Ukraine.
No evidence of wrongdoing has emerged and Biden has dismissed any controversy as a thinly veiled conservative smear.
During Tuesday’s interview on Today, Guthrie began her questions about Hunter by saying, “Has it occurred to you that there’s a certain irony here that here the president is accused of and has acknowledged wanting to get information about your son Hunter and his dealings with Ukraine, and this process of impeachment has ensured that everyone knows about Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine.
Here, Biden cut her off and said, “That’s a good thing, and no one’s found anything wrong with his dealings with Ukraine except they say it sets a bad image.”
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“Well do you agree it sets a bad image?” Guthrie asked, to which Biden responded, “Yeah, and my son said that.” (Hunter addressed his past work and Trump’s accusations in an ABC News interview last year.)
“Do you think it was wrong for him to take that position, knowing that it was really because that company wanted access to you,” Guthrie asked Biden on Today.
And this is where things got a little testy.
“Well that’s not true,” Biden scolded Guthrie. “You’re saying things you do not know what you’re talking about. No one said that — who said that? Who said that?”
Guthrie, sounding slightly taken aback, said, “Well, don’t you think that’s it’s just one of those things where people think, ‘Well that seems kind of sleezy, why would he have that job if not for who his father was?’ ”
“He’s a very bright guy,” Biden said of his son.
Guthrie continued: “I guess the question I’m kind of asking is: Was it right?”
“Appearance,” Biden said. “It’s appearance, yeah. Well he said he regretted having done it. Speaks for himself. He’s a grown man.”
In his ABC interview in October, Hunter said that he had shown “poor judgment” about his past business ties, given his dad’s government work, but he said that he did not “do anything improper.”
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“Did I make a mistake? Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things, yeah,” Hunter said. “But did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”
President Trump was impeached in December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Democratic investigators say he withheld some $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating Hunter ahead of the 2020 election, in which Vice President Biden is a leading contender to challenge Trump at the ballot box.
Trump is on trial in the Senate.
from PEOPLE.com https://ift.tt/36WQ3dg
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