Washington Post Fact Checker Rewinds Clock to Slam Biden with 4 Pinocchios for Hunter Claim from 3 Years Ago
The Washington Post has retroactively dinged President Joe Biden for making the false claim that his son Hunter Biden never earned any money from Chinese business deals during a presidential debate in 2020.
Biden has claimed throughout the past several years that his family did not profit from overseas business deals and that he never discussed business at all with his son.
Republicans in the House and Senate are currently investigating an alleged Biden family influence-peddling scheme with the president at the top.
There are credible claims the Biden name has been used for years for the family to cash in on its power.
But what is indisputable is that Hunter Biden did in fact earn a lot of money in China, which his father denied during a debate with then-President Donald Trump on Oct 22, 2020.
As the two men clashed, Biden denied allegations that his political career was used to enrich himself and his family.
He ended up lying during questions from the debate’s moderator, NBC’s Kristen Welker.
Welker asked Biden, “Vice President Biden, there have been questions about the work your son has done in China and for a Ukrainian energy company when you were vice president; in retrospect, was anything about those relationships inappropriate or unethical?”
Biden responded, “Nothing was unethical. … My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had … the only guy who made money from China is this guy [Donald Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”
Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler took another look at the statement earlier this week after it was divulged that Hunter Biden told a judge last week he had made a lot of money abroad.
As Politico reported, once Hunter’s plea bargain fell apart on charges of tax dodging and a gun charge, he told a Delaware judge he cashed checks from an energy firm linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
The first son told Judge Maryellen Noreika that beginning in 2017, he hauled in $664,000 from CEFC Energy.
With Hunter Biden’s own words now part of the record, the Post revisited Joe Biden’s debate claim.
Kessler wrote, “But now, nearly three years later, Biden’s assertions have been directly rebutted by Hunter himself. In court testimony last week, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China — the first official confirmation that this was the case.”
The Post reported Hunter Biden earned $2.4 million in 2017 and $2.2 million in 2018, which mostly came from “Chinese or Ukrainian interests.”
Given the younger Biden’s statements under oath, Kessler revisited Biden’s nearly three-year-old debate claim.
“It’s possible he purposely tailored his answer to just the period when he was vice president, but Biden has never been known for such parsing of language,” Kessler wrote. “The president tends to be sloppier in his phrasing — which often gets him into trouble.”
Kessler awarded the president four Pinocchios and concluded, “But the fact remains that Biden, during the debate, denied his son had made money in China. In court last week, his son has said he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese business deals.”
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