WASHINGTON — Who are you going to believe, the White House or your lying eyes?
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted Thursday that President Biden “didn’t lie about anything” regarding his interactions with his family’s foreign business associates — a day after the House voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry amid mounting evidence the commander-in-chief had actually been untrue.
“Can you explain to the public why the president interacts with so many of his foreign friends and why he continues to deny any interaction? How should people think about this?” The Post asked Jean Pierre at his usual briefing.
“What we are seeing from the House Republicans is a waste of time and it is indeed a baseless political stunt,” Jean-Pierre responded after all Republicans supported the creation of an investigation to compel testimony and the production of documents.
“House Republicans are going away this week to enjoy a fun vacation, as most Americans should, but what happened to Ukraine? … They couldn’t solve it,” he added. “They can’t help us fix what happened at the border, they can’t solve it. They couldn’t even start a conversation about how we were going to avoid a shutdown in January.
“There is zero evidence – zero evidence. You can ask me about the engagement and what the president has done with his family in the conversation, but there is no evidence,” he said.
The White House claims that President Biden “didn’t lie about anything” regarding his interactions with his family’s foreign business associates. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
“There is no evidence the president has committed any wrongdoing — none. Absolutely nothing — nothing! And that’s just a fact. You’ve heard it from the Republicans themselves. So they waste time. Instead of doing work on behalf of the American people, they are going after the president’s family. But that’s a waste of time.”
“Is there an easy way to counter the central message,” The Post followed up, “that the president interacted with an associate and has lied about it ever since?”
“The president doesn’t lie about anything when it’s — because it’s related to what House Republicans are trying to do,” Jean-Pierre replied. “It’s baseless, it’s a political stunt and it doesn’t prove that the president has done anything wrong — anything wrong. And so they waste their time. They are wasting the time of the American people.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the impeachment inquiry a “baseless political stunt.” AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
The White House stuck to its longstanding denials of the Biden relationship a day after eldest son Hunter Biden appeared to provide a newly massaged framing of the elder Biden’s role, saying on Wednesday “my father is not financially involved in my business” — an update that apparent from a White House statement this summer that Biden “has never dealt with his son.”
The framing itself is an evolution from Biden’s campaign trail claim that “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anybody, anything to do with their business.”
Biden, 81, has steadfastly denied any ties to his brother’s foreign business partners, despite evidence that he met during his vice presidency with Hunter and associates of first brother James Biden from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine, among many of them acquaintances. USA.
The president told The Post last week that he has not interacted with any of his brother’s sons or colleagues, saying, “I don’t. And it’s just a bunch of lies. They lie.”
Hunter Biden said his father was not “financially involved” in his business dealings. Rod Lamkey – CNP
Republicans counter that Biden is a liar. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) tweeted, “The president just lied to the American people again. FACT: There are at least 22 instances of Joe Biden speaking with or meeting with foreign business associates of Hunter Biden.”
There is documentation of Biden’s involvement in his relatives’ foreign affairs from at least 2011 until after he left office as vice president in 2017.
Joe Biden wrote a letter to Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer in 2011 thanking him for attending the Chinese state luncheon in Washington and expressing satisfaction that Archer and Hunter Biden were doing business.
The then-vice president later used speakerphone for about 20 of Hunter’s foreign business meetings and attended two dinners at DC’s Café Milano — in 2014 and 2015 — with his son’s Kazakhstani, Russian and Ukrainian clients, Archer testified July 31 to House Oversight Committee. .
Dinner guests included former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-related entity in early 2014 and separately invested $100 million with Archer’s Rosemont Realty, which was briefly linked to Hunter Biden.
Kazakh businessman Kenes Rakishev, who bought his second son a $142,000 sports car at the time, also had dinner with Joe Biden and posed for pictures with him.
Vadym Pozharskyi, a board adviser to Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter up to $1 million a year starting in 2014 when his father assumed control of US policy toward Ukraine, wrote an email thanking Hunter the next day for the opportunity to meet his father.
Joe and Hunter Biden with Kenes Rakishev and Karim Massimov. KIAR
Archer also testified that Hunter Biden left a gathering at the Four Seasons in Dubai to “call DC” with Burisma owners Mykola Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi in December 2015.
An FBI whistleblower file released in July by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says Zlochevsky complained in 2016 that he was “forced” to pay $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help in ousting prosecutors Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Shokin, who was ousted from office in March after sustained campaigning by Joe Biden. Claims of corruption have not been proven.
In another connection, Joe Biden in November 2015 hosted Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the wealthy Mexican Aleman family, whom Hunter Biden and his associate Jeff Cooper appealed to with energy and technology, at the official residence of the vice president and gave them White White. Home visit.
Joe Biden is pictured at the VP residence with Cooper, Hunter Biden, Carlos Slim, Miguel Alemán Velasco, and his son Miguel Aleman Magnani, founder of the airline Interjet.
In China, Archer also said that Joe Biden had coffee — instead of the previously reported handshake — in December 2013 with Jonathan Li, CEO of the Chinese government-backed investment fund BHR Partners, which Hunter co-founded within weeks of joining his father on board Air Force Two for the trip to Beijing.
The second son then put Joe Biden on speaker phone with Li during a subsequent business trip by Hunter to China, Archer said, and Joe Biden wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
Hunter Biden held a 10% stake in BHR through at least part of his father’s first year as president and the terms of the divestment remain unclear.
As part of China’s later venture with state-linked company CEFC China Energy, Joe Biden allegedly met twice with his brother’s son and partner and was even included as a “big man” for a 10% cut, as documented in May 2017 e- mail a few months after he left his position as vice president. Joe Biden was also named in an October 2017 email about CEFC’s attempt to buy US natural gas.
As part of the same Chinese business relationship, Hunter sent a threatening WhatsApp message on July 30, 2017 to an associate based in China warning that he was “sitting here with my father” and threatening retaliation if the deal was cancelled, shortly before the transfer of $5.1 million from CEFC to accounts linked to Biden — in addition to $1 million sent in March of that year shortly after Biden left office.
IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley, who stepped forward this year to allege a cover-up in the Hunter Biden criminal tax fraud investigation, said Thursday in a Fox News interview that he believed Joe Biden’s presence during business interactions allowed his relatives to seal the deal.
“What President Biden is basically doing through Hunter Biden is allowing Hunter Biden to get this deal where there’s no real visible product being produced, so it’s really just influence peddling,” said Shapley, who oversaw the three-year investigation. “Just sitting in a business meeting, at lunch, drinking water, is all Hunter Biden needs to use that influence.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
