LAS VEGAS — Pete Buttigieg and Julián Castro dodged ethics questions referencing Hunter Biden that some of their primary opponents answered in recent days.
Rather than saying whether they would allow the son or daughter of their vice president to serve on the board of a foreign company, the South Bend, Indiana, mayor and the former housing secretary condemned President Trump for trying to redirect attention to Joe Biden.
“One thing that is really important right now is to deny this president to change the subject, and the subject is that the president confessed on national television to an abuse of power. Let’s deal with that and not get caught in the shiny objects he’s going to throw out,” Buttigieg told the Washington Examiner.
When pressed for a yes-or-no answer, Buttigieg said, “Playing that game is playing the president’s game, and the moment you’re playing it, even when you’re winning, you’re losing.”
Castro took a similar approach.
“Donald Trump is trying to use the same playbook against Joe Biden as he used against Hillary Clinton,” he told the Washington Examiner when asked the same question. “He’s trying to besmirch the reputation of an honorable public servant who has given a lot of honest years of public service so that he can try and win a narrow electoral college victory.”
“I have policy disagreements with the vice president on immigration, on healthcare, on a number of other things,” Castro said. “But I would rather that, you know, we focus on those policy disagreements instead of having Donald Trump come in and scramble the Democratic primary by trying to use this smear technique that he tried to use against Hillary Clinton.”
Hunter Biden secured an up-to-$50,000-per-month board position at a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president and leading Ukrainian policy. Biden in 2015 threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine if officials did not fire a prosecutor who had opened an investigation into the company. Trump mentioned Biden’s demand to the president of Ukraine in a July phone call, which sparked a whistleblower complaint and a formal impeachment inquiry from House Democrats.
Biden’s demand was not illegal, and there is no evidence he committed a crime. Additionally, other Western governments thought the Ukrainian prosecutor was corrupt. But some Democrats think that Hunter Biden’s board position had the appearance of a conflict of interest and should not have been allowed.
Presidential hopefuls Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker said in recent days that they would not want their vice president’s son or daughter to serve on the board of a foreign energy company while answering the same question that Buttigieg and Castro dodged.
“I just don’t think children of vice presidents, presidents during the administration should be out there doing that,” Booker said on CNN.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that her ethics plan would not allow a Hunter Biden-type situation before quickly backtracking and saying she would have to look at the details.
