The biggest liability for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign may be a painter living in a Hollywood Hills mansion — his son, Hunter Biden.
The problems are likely yet to come for the campaign of Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. That’s because President Trump has largely remained holed up in the White House amid the coronavirus pandemic, with much of the country locked down, leaving Hunter Biden as a side issue at best.
While a smattering of online ads from Trump’s campaign reference Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, the president has almost entirely been mum on the issue since Joe Biden, the former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, nabbed the Democratic nomination in early March.
House Republicans, however, are making sure the issue isn’t going away.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Trump’s closest House Republican allies, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday asking for documents related to the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma and Hunter Biden’s ties to it.
In particular, Jordan requested all documents related to Hunter Biden and Burisma’s co-founder Mykola Zlochevsky over a three-year period starting Jan. 1, 2014. Jordan accused Hunter Biden, former Secretary of State John Kerry’s son Christopher Heinz, and American businessman Devon Archer of abusing their connections to politicians for their personal financial gain.
The three were “part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connect[ed] Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama Administration,” Jordan wrote, quoting a 2019 New York Times story.
Jordan’s letter is the latest indication that GOP lawmakers will be providing much of the support to the Trump campaign’s main knocks on both Bidens.
In March, Sen. Ron Johnson, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told reporters that he plans on releasing an interim report on his committee’s investigation into Burisma.
“These are questions that Joe Biden has not adequately answered,” Johnson said at the time. “And if I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote.”
Johnson later subpoenaed State Department records related to the firing of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Shokin was dismissed in March 2016 by the Ukrainian president and claims he was removed because of his intentions to investigate Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma.
Joe Biden has denied any inappropriate ties between his son and Burisma, despite the fact that Hunter Biden made hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting on the company’s board seemingly without any knowledge of the natural gas industry.
Aside from those denials, Hunter Biden has largely remained absent from the campaign trail either physically or in his father’s campaign speeches. He never attended any campaign rallies for his father before the coronavirus outbreak and has seemingly retreated to his California home with his new wife.
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has signaled both publicly and privately that it intends on using the Biden family’s ties to China as a chief campaign issue. The new report from Senate Republicans will likely only provide fresh political ammunition for Trump’s reelection team.
“Joe Biden has a big China problem. Our data shows that Biden’s softness on China is a major vulnerability, among many,” Trump campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh told the Washington Examiner last month.
