Joe Biden’s presidential campaign issued its first plain denial of the allegation that emails discovered on his son Hunter Biden’s laptop show that he stood to benefit directly from an overseas deal Hunter was arranging.
“Joe Biden has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told the Washington Examiner. “He has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”
Last week, the New York Post reported on a trove of emails that it said came from a hard drive from a laptop that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden, that was left at a computer repair shop and then was eventually given to the FBI and President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
One email included in the trove, sent to the younger Biden on May 13, 2017, after his father had left office, contained details of “remuneration packages” for a deal with a Chinese energy company, including “10 held by H for the big guy” — which many interpreted as referring to shares held by Hunter Biden for his father, Joe.
One of the people on the email included on the email chain, Tony Bobulinski, has said that the email is genuine. Bobulinski is a guest of Trump for Thursday night’s debate and in a press conference before the event said that Joe Biden was “plainly familiar at least at a high level.”
The Biden campaign statement came in response to Bobulinski’s press conference.
“What is true is that Tony Bobulinski admitted on the record to Breitbart that he is angry he was *not* able to go into business with Hunter and James Biden,” Bates continued. “What is also true is that in contrast to Vice President Biden, Donald Trump has a secret Chinese bank account and pays more in taxes in China than he pays in federal income taxes in the United States – and that this is a desperate, pathetic farce executed by a flailing campaign with no rationale for putting our country through another four years of hell.”
Bates also added: “As Chris Wallace said on the air about this very smear, ‘Vice President Biden has actually released his tax returns — unlike President Trump — and there is no indication he ever got any money from anybody in these business deals.'”
Earlier on Thursday, Biden’s campaign preemptively dismissed any debate attacks from Trump relating to reports of the contents of a laptop purportedly belonging to the former vice president’s son as “Russian misinformation” — despite top intelligence officials’ insistence that there is no evidence of Russian interference.
“If we see tonight from Donald Trump these attacks on Vice President Biden’s family, I think we need to be very, very clear that what he’s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation,” said deputy Biden campaign manager Kate Bedingfield in a statement.
Naomi Lim contributed to this report.
