Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has warned Fox News not to run President Trump’s campaign ad that fingers the former vice president in the dismissal of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating an energy company that employed Biden’s son, Hunter.
Biden’s campaign told the network the ad peddles spurious claims, although Biden has publicly bragged about his role in firing Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.
The candidate and his myrmidons in the media insist he did nothing wrong. Shokin disagrees, and today, Ukraine’s new prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, said his office will audit the probe of Burisma Holdings, the company that hired young Biden. Reopening the probe was the subject of the now-famous phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25.
Whatever the new prosecutor discovers, Biden and his campaign are panicking. His massive lead over Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren now gone, he can’t permit the scandal narrative to grow.
Thus, the attack on Trump’s ad.
The Ad
The 30-second spot, “Biden Corruption,” is a classic campaign hit piece.
Accompanied by film of Biden’s meeting with Ukraine officials, a photo of Biden and his son, and video of his big brag about firing Shokin, the hard-hitting voiceover explains Biden’s billion-dollar bribe of Ukraine’s government:
Voiceover: Joe Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion if they fired the prosecutor investigating his son’s company.
Biden: “If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not gettin’ the money. Well son of bitch, he got fired.”
Voiceover: But when President Trump asks Ukraine to investigate corruption, the Democrats want to impeach him and their media lapdogs fall in line. They lost the election. And now they want to steal this one.
Biden’s campaign chief Greg Schultz told Fox the ad “spreads false, definitively debunked conspiracy theories,” Politico reported. Schultz’s missive says the ad “falsely states” that “Biden offered Ukraine $1 billion to fire the prosecutor investigating a company affiliated with his son.”
Though the Trump campaign is prepared to fabricate outright lies, your station’s airwaves should not be used to disseminate them. We are putting you on notice about the absolute falsity of the advertisement’s claims, and we expect that you will reject it. Please consider this letter a standing request that you reject any advertisement containing similar claims.
“We are not in the business of censoring ads from candidates on either side of the aisle,” Fox told Politico. “Vice President Joe Biden has a standing invitation to appear on any of our platforms.”
Hate-Trump CNN refused to run the ad.
Media Cover
The leftist media accept Biden’s claims at face value. Politico, for instance, followed Schultz’s claim of innocence with the false statement that “there is no evidence to support the claim that the former vice president intervened in Ukraine to benefit his son, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.”
The Atlantic published a similar claim, and the media in general have swallowed whole Biden’s story that Shokin was fired for corruption, a move that Republicans and other countries supported.
The media also claim the probe of Hunter Biden’s employer, Burisma Holdings, was over by the time Biden pushed Ukraine to fire the prosecutor. That, too, is false.
As The New American reported, citing The Hill’s John Solomon, after Shokin was canned at Biden’s behest, Burisma’s legal team met with his replacement, confessed that the corruption charges against Shokin were false, and apologized. And Shokin claimed in a court affidavit he was fired because Biden’s son was a member of Burisma’s board of directors.
As for the probe being over, which suggests Biden had no reason to push for Shokin’s firing vis-à-vis Burisma, Solomon explained that falsehood in detail:
The Ukraine Prosecutor General’s office still had two open inquiries in March 2016, according to the official case file provided me. One of those cases involved taxes; the other, allegations of corruption. Burisma announced the cases against it were not closed and settled until January 2017.
And no one has explained why Burisma would select Hunter Biden, a drug addict with no experience in the energy business, to sit on its board.
As Secret Empires author Peter Schweizer has explained, the Urkainians “wanted access and they wanted to influence Joe Biden…. He had to know exactly why his son was being paid.”
Of course he did.
Biden boasted publicly that he threatened to withhold the billion dollars in loan guarantees if Ukraine didn’t fire Shokin. The obverse was that Ukraine would get the money if it did fire Shokin.
And Shokin was investigating Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden.
Trump’s ad is accurate.
Photo: AP Images
