US Elections: Donald Trump Taps On Doubtful Tabloid Story Of Biden And Ukraine

Seeking to undermine rival Joe Biden 20 days before the election, President Donald Trump’s campaign has tapped into a tabloid story that offers strange twists on a familiar line of attack: Biden’s relationship with Ukraine. But the New York Post story raises more questions than answers, including about the authenticity of an email at the center of the story.

The story’s origins can also be traced back to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has repeatedly defended unsubstantiated claims about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Even if the emails in the newspaper are legitimate, they do not validate Trump and Giuliani’s claims that Biden’s actions were influenced by their son’s business in Ukraine.

How did Biden’s son become a campaign issue?

Hunter Biden joined the board of directors of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, when his father, then vice president of the United States, was helping to conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine.

Senate Republicans said in a recent report that the appointment may have raised a conflict of interest, but did not present evidence that the hiring influenced US policy.

Meanwhile, Trump and his supporters have put forward a widely discredited theory that Biden lobbied for Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to be fired to protect his son and Burisma from the investigation.

In fact, Biden lobbied for the prosecutor to be fired, but that’s because he reflected the official position not only of the Obama administration but of many Western countries, and because the prosecutor was perceived as soft on corruption.

What does the New York Post story say?

The main email featured by the newspaper is a May 2015 message that it said was sent to Hunter Biden by Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the Burisma board. In it, he thanks young Biden “for inviting me to DC and giving me the opportunity to meet your father and spend time together. It is truly an honor and a pleasure.” [sic]. “

The wording makes it unclear whether he actually knew Joe Biden. The Biden campaign said it had reviewed Biden’s schedules since then and that no meeting was held as the newspaper describes.

How did the Post get the emails?

It is a tangled saga. The New York Post says it received a hard drive with the messages on Sunday from Giuliani, who has promoted the unfounded idea that Ukraine was trying to interfere in the 2016 election and that young Biden may have gotten rich by selling his access to his father. . .

The New York Post says the emails were part of a treasure trove of data recovered from a laptop that was left at a computer repair shop in Delaware in April of last year. It says the client, who the owner could not definitively identify as Hunter Biden, never paid for the service or got it back, and says the owner copied the hard drive and made a copy of the hard drive which he gave to Giuliani’s attorney. .

The Wilmington store owner declined to comment with the Associated Press on Wednesday, saying he didn’t feel like talking. The newspaper says the owner alerted the FBI about the computer and hard drive, and that agents took possession of them. That could not be immediately confirmed and the FBI declined to comment Wednesday.

When asked by an AP reporter via text message how long he had the hard drive, Giuliani replied: “You are interested in wrong. This time the truth will not be defeated by the process. I have much more to do.”

Are the new emails authentic?

The actual origins of the emails are unclear. And misinformation experts say there are several red flags that raise questions about its authenticity, including questions about whether the laptop really belongs to Hunter Biden, said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the nonpartisan Wilson Center in Washington.

Biden’s campaign did not address that issue Wednesday, and Hunter Biden’s attorney did not return an email seeking comment from the AP.

Another possible alarm is the involvement of another Trump associate, Steve Bannon, who the New York Post says first alerted him to the emails and who along with Giuliani has been active in promoting an anti-Biden narrative on Ukraine.

“We should see it as a product of the Trump campaign,” Jankowicz said.

Thomas Rid, a disinformation expert at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, said it is not yet clear to him whether the emails were hacked or spoofed, but said “it could be one or both.”

“It is a common feature in these operations that they combine generic content, accurate content, with counterfeit content,” said Rid.

If authentic, are these emails hurting Biden?

The suggestion that Joe Biden might have met with a representative from Burisma is significant, because he has repeatedly insisted that he never discussed his son’s business with him.

But the emails do not provide details on whether Pozharskyi and Biden actually met and, if so, what they discussed.

If Biden met with Pozharskyi, he was not the only American official who could have. Pozharskyi was part of a Burisma delegation that lobbied congressional officials in 2014 in an attempt to show that the company was not a corruption risk.

How did social media companies respond to the story?

Companies like Twitter and Facebook, which were already under pressure to police their platforms before the election, were quick to flag the article and took steps to restrict its accessibility online, an action that was criticized by Trump and his supporters, including Republicans in Congress.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone announced on Twitter that the company was working to reduce distribution of the article on its platform.

On Wednesday afternoon, Twitter began banning its users from sharing links to the article in tweets and direct messages because it violated company policy banning pirated content.

What is the political impact?

With less than three weeks to go to Election Day and polls showing him behind Biden, Trump appears to be returning to the subject of his opponent’s family to energize his base.

But in an election dominated by concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s strategy is less certain to attract voters he needs to win back, including moderate Republicans and suburban women.

Trump asked for a full explanation of Biden’s talks with Hunter and Pozharskyi. At a campaign rally in Iowa Wednesday night, Trump led the story, calling Biden “a corrupt politician who shouldn’t even be allowed to run for president.”

Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign pointed to the recent Republican-led Senate investigation that found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden regarding Ukraine. He also deliberately pointed to Giuliani’s involvement, saying that his “discredited conspiracy theories and his alliance with figures related to Russian intelligence have been widely reported.”