Trump Calls for China & Ukraine to Investigate 'Corrupt' Joe Biden's Family Dealings
President blasts the Bidens as 'stone-cold crooked' over foreign business deals
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President Donald Trump has called on China to join Ukraine in investigating "corrupt" Joe Biden and his "stone-cold crooked" family's business dealings in their countries.
The president told reporters outside the White House Thursday that both Ukrainian and Chinese governments should investigate the former vice president and his son Hunter Biden.
Speaking to the press from the South Lawn, en route to Florida, Trump said China's President Xi Jinping should be concerned about the "billions of dollars" being "taken out of his country" by Hunter Biden.
"China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened with China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine," Trump said.
"I’m sure that President Xi [Jinping] does not like being under that kind of scrutiny where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy."
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According to Fox News, Trump's call for a Chinese investigation into the Bidens comes as the House moves forward with an impeachment inquiry against Trump for pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the summer to "look into" the family's dealings -- referring to an old investigation involving gas company Burisma Holdings where Hunter served on the board, and the elder Biden's role ousting a prosecutor who had been looking into them.
With his China comments, Trump was referencing another side-plot involving the former VP's son -- including a 2013 trip to Beijing on Air Force Two in which Hunter Biden tagged along.
While it is not unusual for families to join such trips, NBC News reported that Hunter Biden was attempting to start a big-money private equity fund — Chinese authorities issued the business license for the fund 10 days after the trip was over.
#NEW: Pres. Trump calls for both China and Ukraine to investigate Former VP Joe Biden and his son Hunter. pic.twitter.com/og4ERrD36m
— Jennifer Franco (@jennfranconews) October 3, 2019
Biden campaign Chairman Cedric Richmond dismissed Trump's comments on China, saying it is a reprisal of his Ukrainian efforts to taint Biden and a reflection of polling showing Biden leading Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.
"This president is scared, and he's acting out," the Louisiana congressman said.
The Biden campaign charged that Trump's comments were "equivalent" to his call in 2016 for Russia to release Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's emails if they had obtained them by hacking — which U.S. intelligence agencies later assessed to be the case.
Biden communications director and deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield called it "a grotesque choice of lies over truth and self over the country."
The money figure cited by Trump has been disputed by a spokesman for Hunter Biden.
"Biden and his son are stone cold crooked, and you know it!"
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 2, 2019
Our media is so dishonest! pic.twitter.com/pCe0cNX6iZ
The Washington Post recently reported that the firm behind the fund said they planned to raise $1.5 billion, but a spokesman said Hunter Biden bought only a 10 percent equity interest in the fund that was actually worth $430,000.
Nonetheless, Trump said Chinese authorities should look into Hunter Biden's business dealings in their country.
"He got kicked out of the Navy," Trump told reporters Thursday.
"All of a sudden he’s getting billions of dollars.
"You know what they call that? They call that a payoff.”
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Biden, speaking recently to reporters in Iowa, had said he'd "never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."
Fox News reported Tuesday, however, the former vice president appeared in a 2014 photo with Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, who served on the board of Burisma Holdings at the same time as Hunter.
Biden's allies maintain his intervention in Ukraine had to do with corruption concerns.
When asked by a reporter if he had spoken to President Xi about the Chinese opening an investigation into the Bidens, Trump said, "I haven’t but it’s certainly something we could start thinking about."
Later in his conversation with reporters, Trump speculated that there could be more countries in which Hunter Biden had allegedly illicit business activity.
"I think Biden is going down," Trump said, "because now you may very well find that there are many other countries that they've scammed, just like they scammed China and Ukraine and basically who are they really scamming?
"The U.S.A and it's not good.
"And that's probably why China for so many years has had a sweetheart deal where China rips off the U.S.A., because they deal like people with Biden where they give the son a billion-and-a-half dollars, and that's probably why China has such a sweetheart deal where for so many years they've been ripping off our country."
