On Wednesday, CNN Chief National Affairs Analyst and host Kasie Hunt and CNN Political Correspondent Sara Murray reacted to an announcement from House Republicans that they had uncovered two 2019 wire transfers from Chinese nationals to Hunter Biden that listed his father’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address by stating that there’s not “any fire shown around the president” and there’s no indication Joe Biden got or knew about the money.
On “CNN News Central,” Murray said, “House Republicans are launching this impeachment inquiry and they’re trying to make the argument that essentially there was no daylight between what Hunter Biden was doing and his business dealings, and what Joe Biden, now the president of the United States, was involved in. But, of course, they fall short of meeting that mark in terms of actual proof. In this instance, they’re not putting forward any evidence that Joe Biden received any of this money, knew [of] any of this money. They’re just putting forth this example of the address where Hunter Biden was living at the time.”
Murray then read a statement from Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, stating that the Delaware address was used because it was on Hunter’s driver’s license.
On “Early Start,” Hunt said, “[W]e haven’t actually seen the wire transfers, but they say that they got two wire transfers from Chinese nationals to Hunter Biden, notably in 2019, Joe Biden obviously was not president then, but these wires listed President Biden’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address. And [these are] the first examples that the panel found of Hunter receiving money directly and not through a shell company. We’re still obviously learning a lot about this, and again, we should also note to our viewers that Hunter Biden did use this address as his residence during this time. But the reality is, I mean, this looks bad.”
Hunt added, “I think we continually note when we cover this story that there has not been any fire shown around the president himself, even as they are investigating Hunter. But I do — it does seem a little bit tricky. And Republicans, let’s look at this politically for a second…what they’re trying to do, from a political perspective, is create enough smoke that President Trump, on the general election campaign trail, can basically point to it and say, oh, you think I did bad things? Well, they did bad things too, and essentially try to neutralize the very many indictments against him.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett