Nine months after U.S. President Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for asking the Ukrainian president to open a probe against his political opponent, Trump brings Ukraine back to the spotlight a little over a month before the Nov. 3 presidential election.
During the Sept. 27 briefing at the White House, Trump called the work of Hunter Biden – the son of Trump’s rival Joe Biden – for Ukrainian private energy company Burisma Holdings part of a “largest political scandal in history.”
He also made it clear that he intends to use it against Biden at the first presidential debate on Sept. 29.
“I think that that will come up” Trump said. “I don’t think Joe can answer it.”
Burisma Holdings is an oil and gas company owned by former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky who has been under investigations both in the U.K. and Ukraine for tax evasion, fraud and corruption allegedly committed during his tenure while serving as a minister. Zlochevsky was a former ally of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014, just two months before Hunter Biden joined the supervisory board of Burisma, while his father Joe Biden served as the U.S. vice president.
At the press conference, Trump once again hinted that Joe Biden was using his position to shield Burisma, the company that employed his son from investigation in Ukraine. Trump’s attempts to find dirt on Biden in Ukraine led to his impeachment in 2019.
The conspiracy was previously debunked. While Biden indeed pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the unpopular Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, there is no evidence that Shokin, who was notoriously inefficient, was any threat to Burisma. Hunter Biden wasn’t part of any investigation by Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office.
That didn’t stop Trump from pushing the same conspiracy again.
“There are some bad questions, I don’t have answers for,” Trump said.
Read more: Trump, Giuliani drag Ukraine into conspiracy theories
The president’s words come four days after Republican Party senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley published what they advertised as a “bombshell” investigation about what they allege was illegal activity of the Biden family.
Instead, the report largely repeats the information that was already public and has been seen as an attempt to frame Biden in the run-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Trump’s attacks
Trump has been actively commenting on Hunter’s activity in Ukraine since 2019. According to the president, his opponent Joe Biden might have violated the law while serving as vice president.
Trump has accused Hunter of receiving millions of dollars from foreign officials using his father’s high status. Trump also alleges that his father was in on the arrangement.
“Hunter Biden got $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow, and then he got millions more than we thought from Ukraine, millions more from China,” said Trump.
“(Hunter) never mentions it to his father that he received $1.5 billion from China?” Trump added.
The Republican report, published on Sept. 23, calls Hunter Biden’s activity in foreign countries “awkward.”
“Unfortunately, U.S. officials had no other choice but to endure the ‘awkward(ness)’ of continuing to push an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine while the vice president’s son sat on the board of a Ukrainian company with a corrupt owner,” Johnson and Grassley’s report reads.
The report is largely based on already published information, including the report by George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs.
In 2015, Kent, then-acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, expressed his concerns to Biden’s office. Those concerns went unanswered, according to the report. Kent also later raised the issue in emails with his U.S. government colleagues.
Read more about Burisma, its owner Zlochevsky, and criminal cases against him
According to Kent, U.S. officials believed that Burisma’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky was involved in money laundering. During a call with the national security staff in the vice president’s office, Kent said he felt that Hunter’s work for Burisma “creates the perception of a potential conflict of interest, given Vice President Biden’s role and his very strong advocacy for anti-corruption action,” he testified.
Kent’s concerns represented the main concern of the report – Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma made it more difficult for the U.S. government to advocate for anti-corruption in Ukraine and appeared to suggest a conflict of interest.
Despite that, no concrete proof was presented that Joe Biden took any decisions, while in office, to help his son.
Trump has long pushed for an investigation into the Biden family concerning their dealing in Ukraine.
On July 25, 2019, in a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to begin an investigation against the Biden family in response to their Ukrainian activity. Days prior, a $400 million military aid package to Ukraine, approved by Congress, was frozen by Trump.
After a whistleblower complaint was filed on the subject of the phone call, Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on Dec. 18 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
He was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate on Feb. 5.
