Joe Biden now says if elected president he will ban family from holding positions in foreign companies
While President Donald Trump’s controversial telephonic conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky during which he sought a favor to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter saw an impeachment procedure getting launched against him, the Bidens have faced no less moral pressure. Questions are being raised over the junior Biden’s professional dealings abroad and now his father has set things straight.
At a campaign event in Iowa on Sunday, October 13, Joe Biden said if he becomes the president of the US in 2020, he will put a ban on his family members and those associated with him from holding positions with foreign firms. By those associated with him, the 76-year-old former US vice president included hundreds of people that he has known during his long political career.
"No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they are a cabinet member, will, in fact, have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country. Period. Period. End of story," Joe told reporters at the United Food and Commercial Workers 2020 presidential forum in Altoona hours after Hunter announced that he was stepping down from the board of a Chinese private equity company and pledged that he would not do any foreign work if his father wins the 2020 battle.
The senior Biden, who has served as the senator from Delaware for 36 years between 1973 and 2009, said he had not consulted with his son about the statement announcing his resignation and saw it only after it was released on Sunday morning. He also said none other than President Trump has asserted that he or his son has done anything wrong.
Trump has accused the father-son duo of corruption and sought both Ukraine and China to probe them. The latter though has rejected Trump’s idea, saying it was not in favor of intervening in another country’s affair.
Trump has vehemently attacked the 49-year-old Hunter over his position on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas firm. His stint in a plum post in that company coincided with his father playing a key role in the Barack Obama administration’s policy on Ukraine as the vice president, around 2014. It was during the same period that Ukraine found itself at the crossroads with Russia and the West locking horns over the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea.
In his phone call with Zelensky on July 25, Trump had asked the latter to probe Hunter’s work in the East European nation with America’s military aid allegedly dangled as leverage.
Hunter announces resignation from Chinese firm
Hunter’s lawyer George Mesires announced on Sunday that his client was quitting the board of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company and his father said at the Iowa forum that his son could have continued with the job but thought it was not appropriate. Joe reiterated that he has never discussed with his son his overseas dealings in Ukraine though Hunter told New Yorker that they had once.
Pete Buttigieg, also a Democratic presidential aspirant, praised Hunter’s decision to step down and took a dig at the Trump family saying its members were openly trading on the president's name in business deals globally while the real-estate tycoon is serving in office.