Former Vice President Joe Biden may still be riding high from Super Tuesday and all those dropouts and endorsements from his former competitors, but he has yet to face the music over his Ukraine scandal. When Biden was vice president, he led the anti-corruption campaign in Ukraine while his son Hunter was sitting on the board of Burisma Holdings, a corrupt Ukrainian gas company. Many, many Republicans have demanded answers out of Biden and reminded Americans about the scandal throughout the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Several GOP leaders demanded that Biden or Hunter testify. Just this week the Senate will vote on a subpoena to investigate the Bidens' ties to Burisma.
Now that Biden appears to be the eventual Democratic nominee for president, he needs a good answer for what appeared to be a massive conflict of interest. Republican National Committee spokesperson Liz Harrington observed that the media, like MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, is encouraging him to try and find one. But it's useless.
MSNBC laments that Biden doesn't have a better answer on the Hunter and Ukraine (and China and Romania) question
— Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) March 9, 2020
Biden doesn't have a better answer because there isn't one! It's corrupt politicians who've never had a real job using power to enrich themselves
Drain the swamp! pic.twitter.com/CKa2KnzeBS
Mitchell referenced David Ignatius's recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, where he gave Biden some advice for handling future Ukraine interrogations.
Biden’s denials of wrongdoing have been entirely accurate, but they don’t acknowledge a dimension that’s clear to many Republicans and Democrats: Hunter Biden should have quit the Burisma board, or his father should have withdrawn from the lead role on Ukraine. The two didn’t mix. Biden didn’t do anything corrupt, but his patchwork of careful statements doesn’t address perceptions.
Ignatius adds that this story is one "that most Americans can relate to."
"It’s about a loving father and a son whose life was falling apart," he writes.
As Ignatius explains, at the time Hunter took the Burisma board position, he was struggling with a drugs and alcohol addiction, and his brother Beau was undergoing surgery for brain cancer. The Bidens would later lose Beau to the disease. The former vice president, Ignatius explained, would be wise to add that context to any answers he gives about the scandal.
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"In 2014, somebody should have gotten to the vice president when he was dealing with the new illness of his son and gotten him to stop Hunter Biden," Mitchell reasoned. "It's a human thing, but he needs a better answer on the campaign trail."
"The bottom line is that Vice President Biden has done nothing wrong," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) replied, adding that Ukraine wouldn't be the sovereign state it is today without Joe Biden.
Six state primaries take place on Tuesday, including the all-important Michigan Primary. If Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) doesn't pull out a win there, it will be Biden's nomination to lose.
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