Joe Biden Dismisses Hunter Biden Attacks as ‘Smear Campaign’
Joe Biden Dismisses Hunter Biden Attacks as ‘Smear Campaign’
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden dismissed Republican questions about his son Hunter Biden’s business entanglements as a “smear campaign” and suggested the possibility that the release of documents allegedly belonging to the younger Biden was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
“When you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani, the president, together -- it’s just what it is,” Biden said, referring to President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?” the Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
The interview with the former vice president aired Sunday but was conducted on Oct. 19, just as Trump began a week of publicizing unverified documents from a laptop that he and his allies purport belonged to Hunter Biden as proof of a son eager to make money off his father’s name. He also accused Joe Biden of profiting from his son’s foreign business dealings, a claim the Democratic nominee has flatly denied.
Evidence of corruption has failed to materialize regarding the laptop documents or claims made by Tony Bobulinski, who says he is a former business associate of Hunter Biden.
An investigation by Senate Republicans concluded it’s “not clear” whether the younger Biden had any impact on Obama administration policy and did not allege the Bidens broke the law.
Biden has argued that the documents could be emerging as part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
“From what I’ve read and know the intelligence community warned the president that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians,” he said on “60 Minutes.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, he added, “is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden.”
Biden’s claim has not been substantiated. He said during Thursday’s debate that “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant,” the letter he referred to doesn’t conclude that Russia planted the documents. Rather, the letter noted that Russian spies had targeted Giuliani and that they were thus “deeply suspicious” that the Russian government had a role in the effort.
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