Criticisms and investigations of Hunter Biden are off limits, said Pete Buttigieg during Friday’s ABC-hosted Democrat debate in Manchester, NH. He was asked by ABC’s Linsey Davis, one of the event’s moderators, if Joe Biden would place Democrats in “danger” as the party’s presidential nominee given certain Republicans’ stated intentions to investigate allegations of foreign corruption against the former vice president in China and Ukraine.
Buttigieg’s campaign isolated the moment and shared it on Twitter.
Transcript below:
DAVIS: Impeachment is, of course, over, but Republicans in Congress have already started investigating Vice President Biden’s son, Hunter. Mayor Buttigieg, do you think that there’s a danger in for the Democratic Party to nominate a candidate who is still under the threat of investigation?
BUTTIGIEG: No, and we are not going to let them change the subject. This is not about Hunter Biden or Vice President Biden or anybody. This is about an abuse of power by the president. The vice president and I and all of us are competing, but we’ve got to drawn a line here. And to be the kind of president — to be the kind of human being — who would seek to turn someone against his own son, who would seek to weaponize a son against his own father, is an unbelievably dishonorable thing that is just one more example of why we as a party have to be completely united in doing whatever it takes, at the end of the day, to make sure that this president doesn’t get a second term.
Biden then thanked Buttigieg for promising not to criticize his family’s foreign business dealings, “I thank my colleague for saying that. It is a diversion.”
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.