Saturday on Fox News Channel’s “Justice,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) dismissed allegations from a so-called whistleblower claiming President Donald Trump used the power of his office to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential hopeful former Vice President Joe Biden.
Meadows said he had been following the storyline since May and categorized it as a hoax and deemed the whistleblower as illegitimate.
Partial transcript as follows:
PIRRO: Wow. So let’s talk about all this with Republican Congressman Mark Meadows, who joins me now live. Okay, Congressman, so the issue seems to be that Biden pressured Ukrainian officials to fire the prosecutor investigating his son, Hunter’s business in the Ukraine, where it’s estimated he made millions in a business with which he had no expertise or training.
So when he is asked and the initial part of that sound, you know, whether or not he talked to his son about doing business in the Ukraine? The answer is no. His own son answered in a “New Yorker” piece, and I think we have a full screen of it, and he said that he had spoken to his father, as Hunter recalled, his father discussed Burisma, which was that company with him just once. “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’ And I said, I do.”
So right on its face, Joe Biden either didn’t recollect or intentionally misled or lied by saying he never spoke to his son about the Ukraine and the business there.
But more significant, the interview where Joe Biden kind of takes a victory lap and says, hey, look, I got the prosecutor fired, because I was withholding billions from Ukraine. What’s your take on that?
REP. MARK MEADOWS (R-NC): Well, my take on that is exactly the kind of thing that they’ve been accusing President Trump of all along. Can you imagine if the prosecutor in Ukraine, if his name was Bob Mueller, what would have happened? Oh, my gosh, I mean, everything would have gone — I want to talk about Ukraine.
You know, the Democrats have really walked into it, because I can tell you that the investigation with regards to Joe Biden’s son, and also the investigation in terms of other D.N.C. operatives working in the Ukraine, happened months ago. We’ve been following this. I’ve been working on this since back in May. So I can tell you this is just not a Russian hoax. This is a Ukrainian hoax, and it’s not even by a legitimate whistleblower.
I mean, there’s been reports, Judge out there that actually the whistleblower didn’t learn about any of this on the job. Actually, it was hearsay. And so when you start to look at the bottom line of all of this is, one, it does need to be investigated. And so I’m calling on my Democratic colleagues, let’s look at it. And I think at the end of the day, Joe Biden will be the one that is left with egg on his face.
PIRRO: All right. So while we talk about the Democrats trying to get information of this whistleblower, and going after the President. It appears that the Democrats may be hoisted on their own petard, given the fact that if you want to talk about Ukraine, if that, indeed, is the conversation that the whistleblower is talking about, there is nothing that is more corrupt than withholding money, in an effort to get a prosecutor to drop an investigation.
And my sources are telling me that not only did he not give that money, Joe Biden, our taxpayer money until the prosecutor was fired, but he had a hand in saying who the second prosecutor was.
So let me ask you this. If the President — and Rudy Giuliani has talked about this, if the President had a conversation into whether or not Joe Biden leveraged American money to stop the Ukrainian investigation, wouldn’t that be a legitimate ask, as long as there is no mention of money? No quid pro quo? No direction as to how it should end up? Doesn’t the President have a right to ask that question?
MEADOWS: Well, he certainly has the right to ask that question. As long as he doesn’t do what Joe Biden did, which says we’re going to hold some money unless you have a particular type of action.
You know, listen, there have been rumors about this before for a long time, obviously, Joe Biden is even bragging about the fact that he used leverage on American taxpayer dollars. But more importantly than that, when we start to see the connection with Ukraine, and what we have now is a new government in Ukraine. So all of a sudden, the protections are falling apart.
The President is right to ask about it. Certainly, if he did, you know —
PIRRO: He did, right.
MEADOWS: Here’s the thing is, you know, we don’t even know what the conversation was all about. And I believe, in fact, I have a strong belief and informed belief that indeed, nothing inappropriate happened. And I can tell you here tonight, that what we’re going to do is get to the bottom of it.
You know, there’s another person, Judge and I know that perhaps we’re not prepared to go here. But there was also a D.N.C. operative, Miss Chalupa that was paid in 2016 dollars to work with Ukraine. And you know what they said that she was doing, working on a women’s outreach in Ukraine.
Well, maybe that’s why Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin and lost Pennsylvania, because they were working on women’s outreach in a foreign country.
PIRRO: But you know what? This is eerily like Russia, when they want to accuse the President — and they are starting to do that — of doing something wrong with the Ukraine, it’s like a boomerang. It comes back and it hits them.
Again, Hillary with the Ukraine, Joe Biden and his son. His son had no expertise in energy making millions. And then in China, the reports are, he made a billion dollars working in China. The Chinese are not stupid. They are not stupid people, and for them to pay that kind of money.
And in fact, I was reading in “The New Yorker” article that there was an individual that Joe Biden — Hunter Biden, the son was involved with, who wanted to meet Joe Biden. And then Hunter went with his father and Joe Biden, and introduced his father, the Vice President to this Asian partner, who ultimately was arrested for corruption, and the partner’s associate was arrested for corruption.
I mean, this is dirty, dirty, dirty. And in the end, I believe that when everything comes up, you know that if Biden did play a central role in the energy policy in the Ukraine, and he is not going to try to turn this around on Donald Trump, that’s the biggest mistake of his life right now.
MEADOWS: Well, a Judge, here is the interesting thing is, I don’t want to falsely accuse anybody of improper behavior. But what we do know is Adam Schiff, and a lot of his Democratic colleagues continue to spin a narrative over and over again, of which they’re guilty of.
You know, they’ll accuse the President of colluding with Russia. Well, the only people that actually worked with the Russians was the D.N.C. and the Clinton campaign, which did it.
I would think at the end of the day, the only people that actually worked with the Ukrainians is that same group, the Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign, and I think you’ll see that, so I welcome us looking at it hopefully Adam Schiff and I can bring in and subpoena some people to really get to the bottom of this, because at the end of the day, it will not be pretty for them.
PIRRO: You know, it’s amazing. The week started out with the left’s plot against the Supreme Court with Brett Kavanaugh and then we’re ending up with another plot against President Trump. Nothing much changes in Washington, does it?
MEADOWS: Well, they keep doing it. You know, they’re trying to throw every accusation at the President and his team as much as they possibly can because they really have nothing.
And they think if they keep going one after another after another, that eventually the American people will side with them. The exact opposite is happening. The exact opposite is happening.
PIRRO: I agree. We’ll see. We’ll see. Congressman Mark Meadows. Thanks so much for being with us this evening.
MEADOWS: Thank you, Judge.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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