Republicans are hoping a report that Hunter Biden offered to set up a meeting between his then-vice president father and a top executive from the Ukrainian energy company central to President Trump’s impeachment will upend the White House race 20-odd days before the election.
Hunter Biden allegedly suggested Burisma Holdings Limited’s Vadym Pozharskyi speak with his father in 2015 when the younger Biden was being paid $50,000 a month to be a member of the oligarch-linked firm’s board, according to the New York Post Wednesday. The Democratic presidential nominee has denied ever meeting Pozharskyi, echoing a statement from his son’s lawyer that the accusations were tied to “widely discredited conspiracy theories.”
That hasn’t stopped Republicans, including the Trump campaign, from trying to capitalize on the story, particularly since it contradicts the elder Biden’s assertions that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
GOP strategist Henry Barbour said the article played into the perception Joe Biden was willing to “say or do anything to get elected president.”
“He is so eager to attack President Trump, but turns out he’s the one who had secret meetings with foreigners,” Barbour told the Washington Examiner.
For Barbour, that distrust could have repercussions for Biden among voters regarding his stances on taxes, fracking, the Supreme Court, even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for all” healthcare plan and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal.”
“On all these issues, he took the ultra-liberal position in the primary and now wants us to believe he’s with middle America in opposition,” he said. “Make no mistake, a vote for Biden is a vote to move America towards Bernie’s brand of socialism.”
The New York Post report is being treated with caution, in part, because the main April 17, 2015, email on which it is based only alludes to a possible meeting between Biden and Pozharskyi.
Another reason for being skeptical, especially after the WikiLeaks email dumps during the 2016 campaign season? The email and others were recovered from a laptop dropped off in April 2019 to an unnamed Delaware computer repair shop owner and never retrieved, though it was subpoenaed by the FBI in December. And U.S. intelligence officials suspect Russian operatives are working to elevate the Ukraine corruption narrative.
Yet with their publication and circulation, the allegations could still have far-reaching political consequences for the Nov. 3 contest.
Presidential historian and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley said if this year’s so-called “October surprise” emanated from “an old laptop,” it might be history’s “strangest and most ironic” revelation.
“Who knows, there are still two weeks left in the month,” he quipped.
Shirley added, “This newest scandal about Biden and Ukraine is awful, but for it to have legs and become a true October surprise, it must dominate the news cycles for a goodly number of days.”
The 2020 election has already been roiled by a once-in-a-century pandemic that has infected Trump and some of his closest White House aides, race-related social upheaval, and a last-minute opportunity to appoint what could be the president’s third Supreme Court justice.
And all the while, polling has remained remarkably steady. Biden currently has an average lead of 9.8 percentage points on Trump by RealClearPolitics‘s calculation.
“Is there such a thing as an October surprise these days?” Democratic strategist Tom Cochran asked. “Seems like a relic of the past, only in that there seems to be little impact.”
Mentioning the Access Hollywood tape, he continued, “Remember the Trump 2005 hot mic video? We were sure that was the iceberg that would sink the ship.”
Cochran was confident in Biden and his message, which has been tested recently by Republican criticism over his reluctance to rule out court-packing. He and other Democrats, however, were cognizant of the complacent trap.
“If anything, campaigns up and down the ballot should take a lesson from 2016 and recognize that it’s not over until it’s over and the ballots are counted. It’s nice to be up in the polls, but that’s not what counts,” he said.
