As Vice President, Joe Biden is said to have collected bribes with his son Hunter. Republicans are now reporting evidence of this long-known allegation: the recordings of 17 telephone calls. What are the consequences for the Bidens?
In the US there is already talk of “Bribe Gate”: a play on words from “Watergate”, the mother of all political scandals, and “Bribe” – in English: bribery. The accusation of bribery is aimed at kinship for the Bidens: father and son.
In 2016, as Vice President Joe Biden made the payment of aid to Ukraine conditional on the firing of a prosecutor there. Because this prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, is corrupt. The piquant thing about it: Schokin has also investigated the Ukrainian energy company BURISMA, on whose supervisory board Biden’s son Hunter sat.
Republican speaks of tape recordings
So far, so rumored for years. What is new, however, is what Republican Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa now claimed in Parliament: “The foreign citizen who is said to have bribed the Bidens apparently secretly made 17 tape recordings,” Grassley claims. This refers to the founder of BURISMA, Mykola Zlochevsky. The source is an undercover FBI informant. “He wanted to protect himself with these recordings if the bribery were to be discovered,” says Grassley.
But what exactly can be heard on the mysterious tapes, if they actually exist? In a congressional hearing, Senator Ted Cruz asked Deputy FBI chief Paul Abbate whether the federal police had these 17 recordings. “I’m not allowed to comment on ongoing investigations,” said the rebuff.
Republican MP James Comer from Kentucky, who is leading the investigation on the part of the House of Representatives, apparently knows more: “Joe Biden can be heard on two of the recordings, and the former BURISMA manager Hunter Biden on the rest.” All talks revolved around the terms of the bribes: Both Bidens are said to have received five million dollars each.
Trump: Biden is ‘most corrupt US President of all time’
Donald Trump, currently under a lot of pressure because of the charges in the document affair, senses his chance to distract from his own malaise. After his re-election, he will appoint a real special counsel, Trump said last week. He should then investigate the “most corrupt US President of all time” and the entire “Biden crime family”.
While Republican America can’t get enough of “Bribe-Gate,” the pro-Biden other half is ignoring the issue. At the time, Joe Biden acted in consultation with other nations, including the EU, when he pushed for the prosecutor’s dismissal – a concerted action. MP James Comer predicts that this line of defense won’t last much longer: “It’s getting harder and harder for Biden to explain that. And the left-wing media will eventually probe where Biden got the money from.”
Comer’s party now wants a parliamentary committee of inquiry to unearth evidence of bribes worth millions and revealing tape recordings.