Sen. Rand Paul speculated that President Barack Obama criticized a GOP-led investigation into Hunter Biden because he was aware of “corruption problems” while in office.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is leading an investigation related to Biden’s role on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm that faced allegations of corruption. In March, Obama representative Anita Breckenridge sent a letter to Archivist of the United States David Ferriero, arguing that the investigation was giving credence to “Russian disinformation.”
Paul appeared on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom Wednesday morning to discuss Obama’s pushback on the investigation, which was uncovered by BuzzFeed News on Tuesday.
“There’s been rumors for quite a while that people within the Obama administration knew about the corruption problems with Hunter Biden, that they warned the vice president, and maybe even the president about it. I think that there could be a smoking gun, that there’s actually a record of some of these complaints that were going on at the time,” the Kentucky Republican said.
“There have been some articles written quoting unnamed sources, saying that they were assistants, and people around Joe Biden at the time were saying this Hunter Biden thing looks bad and you should really put a stop to it,” he added. “And they never did. But I think even President Obama knew about this, so it’s not surprising to me that he would try to keep a lid on it.”
Last November, Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the National Archives demanding documents related to Obama-era White House meetings that National Security Council staff had with Ukrainian officials and former Democratic National Committee consultant Alexandra Chalupa, 43, a Ukrainian American who has been accused of coordinating with Ukrainian officials while looking for Russia-related opposition research on President Trump’s then-campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The National Archives did not deliver the documents by the deadline.
In response to the letter from Obama’s representative, Johnson’s spokesman Austin Altenburg told the Washington Examiner that “our legitimate oversight is based on the many unanswered questions that surround potential conflicts of interest relating to the Obama administration’s policy decisions with respect to Ukraine and Burisma Holdings.”
He also called claims that the investigation is promoting Russian disinformation “unfounded.”
