White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing Monday that there was “zero evidence” that President Joe Biden had “discussed,” or was “involved with,” his son Hunter’s business dealings, now under scrutiny by a special counsel.
Jean-Pierre answered questions from reporters on her first briefing in several weeks, and the first since Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, who was already investigating Hunter Biden, as the special counsel.
While avoiding specifics, she said: “They [Republicans] keep turning up documents and witnesses showing the president wasn’t involved, never discussed these business dealings, and did nothing wrong. There’s been zero evidence showing otherwise.”
That response is different from Jean-Pierre’s effort in recent weeks to claim that “[t]he president was never in business with his son,” which she denied was a change from Biden’s own earlier response that he had “never discussed” his family’s businesses.
In claiming that there was “zero evidence,” Jean-Pierre ignored a mounting collection of evidence, including the following:
- Travel logs showing that Hunter Biden traveled to China with his father on Air Force Two before a lucrative business deal
- E-mails and messages on Hunter Biden’s laptop showing that Joe Biden had met with his son’s business associates
- Evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop showing that he and his father had intermingled their family’s finances and bills
- Businessman Tony Bobulinski’s claim that he met with Joe Biden to discuss “family business plans with the Chinese”
- A voicemail from Joe Biden to his son regarding New York Times coverage of Hunter Biden’s business interests
- Bank records showing wire transfers from abroad to Hunter Biden via shell companies for distribution to family members
- Testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, stating that Joe Biden had spoken by speakerphone at least 20 times with Hunter Biden’s business associates, and had attended a dinner meeting with many of them in 2014
- Joe Biden’s infamous boast about using the threat of withdrawing $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor, whom Devon Archer confirmed Hunter had been hired by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma to counteract
Democrats have admitted that Hunter Biden did “unlawful” things, though he is supposed to be presumed innocent, but claim that Joe Biden was not involved, despite the evidence that the president has lied about his involvement and his discussions.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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