Trump furious after report says Bill Barr kept Hunter Biden probe under wraps in run-up to 2020 election
President Donald Trump has been left enraged after it emerged that US Attorney General William Barr was aware of investigations into President-elect Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden's business dealings for months but worked to shield them from the public, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump raised questions on why didn't Barr report the probe into Hunter before the elections, then continued to falsely declare he had "won the election anyway." Trump wrote on Twitter: "Why didn’t the Fake News Media, the FBI, and the DOJ report the Biden matter BEFORE the Election. Oh well, it’s OK, we won the Election anyway - 75,000,000 VOTES!!!" The Republican's reaction came after a report on The Wall Street Journal, on Thursday, December 10, claimed that Barr was aware of the allegations into Hunter's business dealings since spring and had also attempted to stop the probe from being made public.
Trump and other Republicans have urged Barr to pursue Hunter for months. The Journal quoted a source as saying that the attorney general warded of pressure from Congress Republicans who were aiming at information from the investigations. Barr's reported attempts to keep Biden probes from becoming public were in accordance with DoJ rules that restrict prosecutors from taking public investigative steps that could affect the outcome of an election.
The Journal's report came after the Department of Justice recently announced that it was probing some of Hunter's Chinese business deals. The DOJ, however, is not looking into the contents of a laptop alleged to belong to Biden. The contents of the laptop were leaked in the weeks running up to the November elections by Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Republicans in Senate, on September 23 this year, had released an 87-page report detailing Hunter Biden’s work for Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings during the time his father Joe Biden was vice president. The report had found out that two of the Obama administration officials had raised concerns that Biden’s Ukraine policy would be a conflict of interest with Hunter’s ties to the gas company.
President Trump, later today, wrote another tweet on the incident, writing: "Now it turns out that my phone call to the President of Ukraine, which many, including me, have called “perfect", was even better than that. I predicted Biden corruption, said to call the A.G., who perhaps knew of the corruption during the impeachment hoax?"
Meanwhile, the President-elect's son, in a statement on Wednesday, December 9, announced that he was under federal investigation over his taxes. Biden's transition office read out a statement, saying: "I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs."
The investigation reportedly began in 2018 but a new round of subpoenas were issued on Tuesday, December 8, including one to Hunter, according to the Associated Press. The US Attorney General had publicly announced that the president-elect was not under investigation in the case and no wrongdoing has been alleged on his part. Biden's transition team also released a statement, showing the Democrat leader was standing by Hunter and was "proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger," the statement said.