Appearing Tuesday on PBS NewsHour, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defended former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, against allegations of corruption in China and Ukraine, claiming there is “no evidence” that the pair “did anything wrong.”
A transcript is as follows:
JUDY WOODRUFF: Former Vice President Joe Biden clearly a part of [the Ukraine matter]. His name came up during [the Trump-Zelensky] call. Whether he did or didn’t do anything wrong — and there’s no proof that he did — President Trump keeps bringing that up, is there an optical problem for Joe Biden because he son was in a position to be making a lot of money from a company that was in a foreign country?
HILLARY CLINTON: You know, Judy, this is the goal of the Trump strategy: It is to raise questions. There is no evidence that either one of them did anything wrong. Could there be a question of judgment about his son? Well, that’s fair game. But there is absolutely no evidence, and there will not be any evidence, that Joe Biden did anything wrong. Enough with these wild unfounded conspiracy theories. Using the help of foreign governments to interfere in our election and to undermine people who have been in the public eye for a long time and I hope the American people reject this, as they should.
In recent days, President Donald Trump has suggested China and Ukraine investigate alleged corruption committed by the Biden family. As Breitbart News extensively reported, Hunter Biden’s investment company scored a $1.5 billion investment deal with the Bank of China after traveling with his father on Air Force Two to the country in 2013. Further, then-vice president Biden forced out former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin as he was investigating the gas giant Burisma Holdings, which was paying Hunter Biden $83,000 monthly as a member of its board, despite his lack of expertise in the energy sector. Biden later boasted before the Council of Foreign Relations last year that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid unless the prosecutor was fired.
Clinton may have a personal dog in this fight, as the Biden allegations first came from a book by Peter Schweizer — investigative journalist, president of the Government Accountability Institute, and senior contributor to Breitbart News — called Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends. The book functions as a spiritual sequel to Schweizer’s Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. That book’s findings, confirmed even by Democrat-friendly corporate media, became a major problem for her campaign and may have helped in the decline of The Clinton Foundation.