A New York Times reporter says Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden faces a "significant liability" in a developing story about allegations that the former vice president may have pressured the Ukrainian government on behalf of his lobbyist son Hunter.
Potentially damaging details have yet to be reported, journalist Ken Vogel said during a cable news appearance Friday in which he additionally warned that President Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who want Biden to be investigated for potential conflicts of interest, have gotten some of the facts wrong.
Vogel's reporting, which includes a May 1 story that helped generate renewed scrutiny of Hunter Biden's ties to an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, also flies in the face of Joe Biden's dismissal of the controversy on Friday when he said "not one single credible outlet has given any credibility" to Trump's claims of possible misconduct.
The situation involving Biden's son working for Burisma Holdings "is a significant liability for Joe Biden," Vogel said during a panel led by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. "There is a story here. We’ve told some of it. There is more to be told. We are going to continue to sort of pull that back."
"That said," he continued, "the way that Rudy is inserting himself into it is both not helpful, I think, to Rudy and to Trump because it kind of jumbles it. He’s getting the facts wrong, and he is making it appear as if this is just a partisan hit job, whereas if he would just kind of leave the reporters to do the work on it, I think that, you know, potentially this story might be taken more seriously."
Vogel's May 1 report is an examination of how in 2016 then-Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not fire its top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had undertaken an anti-corruption investigation into the owner of Burisma Holdings, which had employed Hunter Biden as a board member in 2014. Soon after, Shokin, who himself had been accused of corruption, was forced out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Former Ukrainian and U.S. officials have said the Burisma case had gone dormant before Shokin was fired, and Shokin's successor, Yuri Lutsenko, told Bloomberg News in May there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Biden family. But that has not stopped Giuliani from publicizing the investigation and pushing the Ukrainian government to reopen the case at a time when Biden emerged as the front-runner in the 2020 Democratic primary.
"We have two outstanding allegations of massive corruption," Giuliani said during a combative CNN interview Thursday evening, also referring to his belief that there was collusion between Ukrainian officials and the Hillary Clinton campaign to release damaging information about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is in prison for illegal lobbying and financial crimes.
Over the past few months, Giuliani has met with Ukrainian officials, encouraging them to investigate the two matters, including a meeting in Madrid with Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that was set up by the State Department.
The former New York City mayor claims he has acted independently, informing Trump of his exploits months after he began. But the situation has drawn scrutiny by Democrats in Congress, who are investigating whether Trump and Giuliani improperly pressured the Ukrainian government by withholding funds unless they agreed to embark on an inquiry that could boost the president's reelection campaign.
A July call between Trump and Zelensky has become a flashpoint of concern as reports this week say Trump urged Zelensky roughly eight times to open an investigation into Hunter Biden, and their conversation is reportedly a subject of an intelligence community whistleblower complaint that the Trump administration is withholding from Congress.
In dismissing that he said anything wrong in his phone call with Zelenksy, Trump has accused the "fake news" media of not wanting to cover the Biden story.
Vogel agrees that there appears to a dearth of coverage and raised the prospect of a double standard.
"I got to say, if we were to just perform a thought exercise here and replace Joe Biden with Donald Trump and Hunter Biden with Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr., we probably would be seeing more coverage of this story because I think that there is something here that does speak to at least optics, if not potential conflicts of interests," Vogel said Friday.
Vogel is not without his critics. His May 1 report received scrutiny because it was co-written with Iuliia Mendel, who went on to become Zelensky's press secretary. This prompted a stern rebuke from a Biden campaign adviser.
"The fact that the NYTs acted as a willing agent for the Trump White House’s lies and defended the paper’s publishing of them, makes this even more eyebrow raising. Have folks learned ANYTHING from the last presidential election?" Symone Sanders tweeted in June.
Vogel also drew outrage among left-leaning media figures after Trump tweeted out a montage of reporters discussing the Biden controversy on Saturday, including a clip of Vogel. "Congrats [Vogel] on the great work you’re doing for the Trump campaign!" Vox's Aaron Rupar tweeted, noting how the video serves as an advertisement for the Trump reelection campaign.
This is the real and only story! pic.twitter.com/4z8eOcm6PA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2019
Vogel admitted Friday that it is getting "complicated" to report the story because it is "impossible to separate the political motivation that the Trump folks have from what actually may be here in the facts of this situation."
But he stressed how his reporting has turned up evidence that high-level officials in the Obama State Department and other agencies raised "a red flag about Hunter Biden’s involvement with this gas company at a time when Joe Biden was the standard-bearer for the Obama administration’s case that Ukraine needed to clean up its act, including by investigating this gas company."
"I think there’s probably something there," he said.
