Graham Zeroes In on Biden Investigation: 'I Have a Duty'
As Sen. Lindsey Graham puts it, there’s no question about it:
The dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden, Biden’s son, Hunter, and the infamously corrupt politics of post-Soviet Ukraine leave the Senate no choice when it comes to the ongoing impeachment inquiry in the nation’s capital.
With President Donald Trump under a Democratic microscope in the House of Representatives and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Senate Republicans will have to look at the role of the Bidens’ behavior in the ongoing controversy.
According to The Hill, Graham told reporters Monday that seeking an investigation of the Bidens is a matter of “duty.”
And he did it days after Joe Biden told CNN that Graham is going to “regret” it.
On Thursday, Schiff closed the public hearings part of the House “impeachment inquiry” without ever broadening their focus beyond mainly State Department and military witnesses opposed to the president’s Ukraine policies.
The role of the Bidens, and Hunter Biden’s $50,000-a-month sweetheart job on the board of the Ukraine energy company Burisma Holdings, was studiously avoided, unless Republicans managed to bring it in through questioning.
That needs to change, said Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has become one of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken allies on Capitol Hill, told reporters.
“We’re not going to live in a country where only one party gets investigated,” and only “Donald Trump and his family gets looked at,” he said.
“My conscience is clear,” Graham said, according to The Hill. “I love Joe Biden as a person, he is a really decent man, he’s had a lot of tragedy in his life, but I have a conscience very clear right now. And I have a duty. If the House is going to shut it down, the Senate is going to pick it up.”
Among other steps, Graham is asking the former vice president for transcripts of his calls with the former president of Ukraine.
“I’m not saying Joe did anything wrong, but I want to see the transcripts, and if there’s nothing there I’ll be the first one to say there’s nothing there,” Graham said, according to The Hill
In a Twitter post, he made similar points.
“I believe Hunter Biden’s association on the Burisma board doesn’t pass the smell test,” he wrote.
“If a Republican was in the same position, they’d certainly be investigated.”
I love Joe Biden as a person but we are not going to give a pass to what is obviously a conflict of interest.
I believe Hunter Biden’s association on the Burisma board doesn’t pass the smell test.
If a Republican was in the same position, they’d certainly be investigated!
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) November 25, 2019
He’s got that last one right.
The same mainstream media that has smeared the Trump administration for three years has gone to great lengths to pretend there’s absolutely nothing untoward about the son of a then-vice president of the United States receiving a check of $50,000 a month from a company in an industry he knows nothing about and whose language he can’t even speak.
In an interview with ABC News in October, in fact, Hunter Biden said he would “probably not” have landed such a lucrative job if his last name wasn’t “Biden.”
In his interview with CNN on Friday, Joe Biden — who spent more than three decades in the Senate before leaving it to become vice president to former President Barack Obama — answered as though questions about corruption were irrelevant.
He also implied that Graham was operating under some sort of political pressure from the White House.
“They’re asking Lindsey Graham. They have him under their thumb right now. They know he knows if he comes out against Trump he’s got a real tough road for re-election,” Biden told CNN host Don Lemon.
“Trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the Ukrainians wouldn’t yield to. The Ukrainians would not yield to, quote, ‘investigate Biden’ — there’s nothing to investigate about Biden or his son.”
Graham’s statements put things differently. And in an interview with Fox News Radio, quoted by The Hill, he gave one reason why:
“I do not trust what’s going on in the House of Representatives. I do not trust Adam Schiff to be fair to the president,” he said.
Millions of Americans agree with Graham on that one — no question about it.
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