Very soon after finally formally announcing his bid to unseat President Donald Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden has again found himself directly at odds with the Trump team. This week, presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani called for an investigation into Biden over evidence-less allegations that he operated under a conflict of interest in dealings with Ukraine under then-President Barack Obama. In short, the issue is that Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to kick out a corrupt top prosecutor who at the time, was investigating Burisma Holdings, an energy firm on whose board Joe’s son Hunter Biden sat.
There’s no apparent even approach towards a “smoking gun” indicating an entanglement of interests, but Giuliani trumpeted all the same:
‘Biden conflicts are too apparent to be ignored and should be investigated quickly and expeditiously. But the more important question is how deep and how high did the alleged Ukraine conspiracy go?’
https://t.co/FNVj16Hf10 via @nytimes. Biden conflicts are too apparent to be ignored and should be investigated quickly and expeditiously. But the more important question is how deep and how high did the alleged Ukraine conspiracy go?
— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) May 2, 2019
It’s unclear who exactly Giuliani might want to investigate Biden, although there are certainly some prime candidates. The current top prosecutor in Ukraine has reopened a probe of Burisma Holdings, which he’s met with Giuliani multiple times about. According to that currently serving Ukrainian official, right in the middle of one of his meetings with the New York City lawyer turned Trump shill, Giuliani “called Mr. Trump excitedly to brief him on his findings,” suggesting the narrative that the real colluders with foreign powers are the Democrats is far from gone. Trump has sought to have Attorney General William Barr look into the material that current Ukrainian authorities had collected. The newest incarnation of the probe reportedly centered on millions of dollars of payments from Burisma, whose owner Mykola Zlochevsky has been internationally accused of wide-ranging corruption including crimes like money laundering.
On top of that, besides some on the right pointing out that some compromising material that helped underlie the Russia investigation came from Russians themselves — and therefore, in a spectacular leap of “logic,” constituted “collusion” with the Russian government, or something — Giuliani and others have also zeroed in the cooperation of Ukrainian officials with U.S. interests concerned about the Trump team. Information from Ukraine helped with the demise of former Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort’s career following years of secretive work for the now defunct pro-Kremlin government of Viktor Yanukovych. In another spectacularly flailing leap, apparently we’re supposed to be more concerned about those who exposed the fact that a president’s campaign manager laundered massive amounts of cash garnered from work for a pro-Russia interest overseas than we’re supposed to worry about the corruption itself.
In the wake of the issue re-emerging, Joe and Hunter have both insisted that they did not bring their respective roles in the situation to one another. The former vice president says he only even learned about Hunter’s involvement with Burisma via news reports.
Remember — Giuliani is the guy who not too long ago said on national television that there’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians. Now, suddenly, he has a conscience covering issues of international entanglement with domestic political affairs — and yet, he still works for President I Love Putin. Go figure.
Check out Twitter’s response below…
Featured Image via screenshot
