US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) should consider investigating Joe Biden and his son after again calling on Ukraine’s president to re-open an investigation into one of his top political rivals.
“China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China was just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump told reporters on Thursday as he left the White House.
Trump’s remarks came after he reiterated his call for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to start an investigation of the Bidens.
Trump’s allegation that Joe Biden, as vice president, tried to shield his son Hunter from a Ukrainian investigation of a company that employed him, has been discredited.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment yesterday.
The US House of Representatives has begun an inquiry into impeaching Trump over his conduct in a July 25 telephone call with Zelenskiy.
After freezing military aid to Ukraine, which is battling a Russia-backed insurgency, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, and encouraged him to work on the matter with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and US Attorney General William Barr.
“I would say that President Zelenskiy, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens, because nobody has any doubts that they weren’t crooked,” Trump said on Thursday.
Biden’s campaign dismissed Trump’s remarks as without merit.
“Donald Trump is flailing and melting down on national television, desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organizations,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said in a statement. “It could not be more transparent: Donald Trump is terrified that Joe Biden will beat him like a drum.”
Also on Thursday, Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, retweeted a statement she originally made in June about electoral intervention from foreign governments.
“Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a US election,” she said.
On China, Trump suggested that the Bidens might be the reason Beijing “has such a sweetheart deal, that for so many years they’ve been ripping off our country.”
Trump did not elaborate, but often says China is “ripping off” the US. in trade — the predicate for his ongoing trade dispute with Beijing.
Speaking to the media in September, Trump alluded to his suspicions about Biden and China: “When Biden’s son walks out of China with US$1.5 billion in a fund, and the biggest funds in the world can’t get money out of China, and he’s there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that’s a horrible thing,” he said.
Implicit in Trump’s statements is that Joe Biden used his position to encourage Chinese officials to benefit his son’s business dealings involving a private-equity venture in the country.
Not only has no evidence emerged of the vice president’s intervention, but it is unclear whether Hunter Biden derived any financial benefit from the venture in the first place.
Meanwhile, China experts say Beijing stands to gain little by helping Trump undermine a political opponent.
Beijing has a long-standing public policy of not interfering in foreign countries’ politics.
Beijing does “not want to be involved or seen involved in the US presidential elections,” said Jeffrey Bader, a former special assistant for national security to then-US president Barack Obama for and a top Asia adviser.
Chinese State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said this repeatedly at events around the UN General Assembly last week.
“China will never interfere in the internal affairs of the United States, and we trust that the American people are capable of sorting out their own problems,” he said.
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