Joe Biden’s presidential campaign sent a memo to reporters warning them about spreading “misinformation” regarding claims that the former vice president inappropriately interfered in Ukraine to protect his son, Hunter Biden. The claim is popular among President Trump and some of his most ardent defenders.
The Monday memo, which was first reported by NBC News and released only a day before the president’s impeachment trial is scheduled to begin in the Senate, also attacks those who have argued for one or both of the Bidens to testify in the trial. It alleges that Trump “weaponized foreign and national security policy in an attempt to coerce a foreign country into lying about a rival presidential candidate.”
The president has been accused of having withheld aid to Ukraine in order to persuade government officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son regarding the latter’s work with Ukrainian company Burisma, which had previously faced accusations of corruption. Trump has alleged that Joe Biden inappropriately wielded his own power as vice president to get Viktor Shokin, a Russia-aligned Ukrainian prosecutor general, removed from his position, claiming the move was made to protect his son. Shokin was widely regarded as corrupt.
Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, and senior adviser, Tony Blinken, the authors of the memo, alleged the president has been “spreading a malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory” that “Biden engaged in wrongdoing when he executed official United States policy to remove a corrupt prosecutor from office.”
They also point out that the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, and fact-checks from the Washington Post and New York Times have all labeled the president’s claims about the Bidens as false or misleading.
“Since Trump was exposed debasing his office in an unprecedented way, his defenders have attempted to distract from his malfeasance and smear Biden by repeating this now comprehensively-debunked conspiracy theory,” they wrote. “It is not sufficient to say the allegations are ‘unsubstantiated’ or that ‘no evidence has emerged to support them.’”
The memo concluded by noting that no “political entity” should act as an editor, claiming that failing to report on this narrative in a way that doesn’t identify it as a “conspiracy theory” with “false accusations” results in making a reporter “an enabler of misinformation.”
