In a now-familiar pattern, former President Donald Trump has again enlisted the help of a foreign leader to uncover possible dirt to try to hurt a political enemy.
Trump, who was indicted in 2019 for demanding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy do Trump a “favor” by investigating Joe Biden’s son Hunter, told right-wing TV host John Solomon he wanted the Russian one in an interview published Tuesday President Vladimir Putin to clear up unconfirmed reports that Biden’s son received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Yelena Baturina, wife of the former mayor of Moscow.
“She gave him $3.5 million, so now I would think Putin would know the answer to that,” Trump told Solomon. “I think he should release it. I think we should know that answer.”
“How come the mayor of Moscow, his wife, gave three and a half million dollars to the Biden family?” he continued. “I think Putin would probably be ready to give that answer now. I’m sure he knows.”
In a presidential debate with Biden during the 2020 election campaign, Trump echoed this claim, which appears in a report by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security authored but not verified by the then Republican majority.
During the debate, Biden said of the $3.5 million transfer allegation that it was “just not true.”
Former President Donald Trump at a Save America rally in Commerce, Georgia on March 26. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
While Trump has long sought foreign help to uncover alleged business misconduct by Hunter Biden, the president’s son remains the center of a federal tax investigation. The New York Times reported that although he has settled outstanding tax debts related to his overseas dealings, he is the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation.
After learning in 2020 that Hunter Biden was under investigation, Hunter Biden said in a statement that “a professional and objective review of these matters will determine that I have conducted my affairs legally and appropriately.”
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Whether meant seriously or sarcastically, Trump’s contact with Putin’s government is not new either. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump found that Russian hackers had broken into a Democratic National Committee server and stolen sensitive material, and confused this event with Hillary Clinton’s deletion of 33,000 personal emails from her private server.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the 30,000 missing emails. I think our press will probably reward you mightily,” Trump said at a news conference on July 27, 2016.
The FBI declined to press charges against Clinton in the matter, and although Trump promised that if elected president he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the deleted emails, he never did.
At a rally in Georgia over the weekend for candidates in the battleground state he supported in the 2022 midterm election, Trump hinted that he was considering running for president again in 2024, saying, “We might just have to do it again.” do.”