It feels like 2020 again. Former President Donald Trump has revived calls for Hunter Biden to reveal his alleged ties with Eastern European business leaders, this time soliciting the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump made the request in an interview with journalist John Solomon, excerpts of which were released early Tuesday on conservative news network Real America’s Voice. The former president mentioned a partisan and highly-criticized report by Senate Republicans in 2020 that said an investment firm associated with Hunter Biden, son of Trump’s successor Joe Biden, had received a $3.5 million wire transfer a decade ago from the wife of Moscow’s then-mayor. Trump called on Putin to disclose the nature of this transaction.
“She gave him $3.5 million, so now I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it,” Trump said.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, has denied that his client owns the company in question, and neither Trump nor the Senate Republicans who authored the report have provided further evidence of illegal payments involving Hunter Biden.
Trump’s public request to Putin comes days after President Biden called the Russian President a “war criminal” and a “butcher” for the Russian army’s actions during the invasion of Ukraine.
Trump, in contrast, has described Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius,” earning criticism of Trump for being soft on Russia.
This isn’t the first time that Trump has enlisted the help of a foreign leader to go after a political rival, having notably made a similar public request to Putin to find incriminating evidence against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. In 2019, Trump also asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “look into” Joe and Hunter Biden over a phone call, after allegedly withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine a week before the call, a threat that would eventually bring about Trump’s first impeachment trial.
In the recent interview, Trump also expressed his desire to learn more about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings. Zlochevsky named Hunter Biden to Burisma’s board in 2014 as a director of the company’s legal unit, where he was said to have earned over $80,000 monthly.
Hunter Biden’s alleged business dealings with Eastern Europe became a hot topic during the 2020 presidential campaign. And Trump made the subject one of his favorite talking points—embellishing it with many dubious claims—during the presidential debates in 2020.
Joe Biden denied that such a payment ever took place, saying during one debate with Trump that the allegations were “simply not true.”
But prosecutors have plowed ahead with a federal tax inquiry into Hunter Biden, specifically investigating his foreign income and business dealings with Ukraine. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware is investigating money Hunter Biden received years ago from his ties to Burisma Holdings. The same office has been examining his tax affairs since 2020.