Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a forum in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Oct. 2, 2019. (Steve Marcus/Reuters)

Joe Biden Says Son Hunter Will Join Him on His 2020 Campaign Trail

By Isabel van Brugen

Former Vice President and Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate Joe Biden on Oct. 3 confirmed his son Hunter will be joining him on his campaign trail.

Speaking with the Reno Gazette Journal after a campaign stop in Reno, Nevada, Biden defended his son Hunter amid concerns about his statement last year which detailed how he had pressured the Ukrainian government into firing top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, the energy company in Ukraine for which Hunter Biden was a board member.

“I knew it was going to be this way,” he told the news outlet on Wednesday night.

He added that he wasn’t sure exactly when his son would be joining him on the campaign trail, as he will be busy teaching at a law school on the West Coast next year.

“He’s my son. He’s a fine man. He’s been through hell,” Biden added. “Look, we are a family. We have been through a lot worse.”

“I see him and talk to him and I’m proud of him.”

The news came a day after President Donald Trump described Joe and Hunter Biden as “stone-cold crooked” during a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto.

A person from the crowd of reporters asked Trump: “What did you want about Biden, what did you want [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy] to look into on Biden?”

“Look, Biden and his son are stone-cold crooked and you know it,” Trump said. “His son walks out with millions of dollars. The kid knows nothing. You know it and so do we.”

Trump on Sept. 20 urged the press to investigate into Biden’s statement last year.

Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma recently came under the media spotlight after the White House released a memo showing that Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July phone call to investigate corruption in Ukraine.

Hunter, who sat on the board of Burisma from 2014 to at least 2018, has said he consulted for Burisma, but critics have suggested he was not doing actual work in return for his substantial income, an allegation he denies.

Biden Said He Called for Shokin’s Dismissal

At an event in 2018, Joe Biden said that in 2016 he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid from Ukraine unless then-President Petro Poroshenko fired Shokin.

“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden recounted at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a [expletive], he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

In a tweet early on Oct. 3, Trump quoted Fox News, which obtained “new documents [showing] that a former Ukrainian prosecutor said that he was forced to back off looking into a firm tied to Hunter Biden.”

“Does anyone other than Fake News protectors have a doubt?” he added. Joe Biden has since denied using his influence to get Shokin fired to prevent him from investigating Hunter’s involvement. Biden claimed that the reason that Shokin was fired was because Shokin was inept. Investigative reporter for The Hill, John Solomon argues there is evidence to support the former.

Shokin said in a sworn affidavit obtained by The Hill that he was told that he was fired in March 2016 because Biden wasn’t pleased with the investigations into Burisma.

Shokin said that he tendered his resignation at the request of then-President Poroshenko, who “asked me to resign due to pressure from the U.S. presidential administration, in particular from Joe Biden … Biden was threatening to withhold USD$1 billion in subsidies to Ukraine until I was removed from office.”

Joe Biden, on Sept. 21, told reporters in Iowa he never discussed business with Hunter, and denied any wrongdoing related to Ukraine.

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said. However, his son had previously told The New Yorker that the two had spoken “just once” about Hunter’s work in Ukraine.

On the same day as Joe Biden’s statement to reporters, Trump posted to Twitter a video captioned, “This is the real and only story!”

The video showed Joe Biden dismissing the allegations against him and his son, interspersed with clips of various media outlets saying that probes into the matter have suggested conflicts of interest and a clip of Biden bragging about getting the prosecutor fired.

A photograph emerged on Sept. 30, on Fox News, showing Joe Biden playing golf with Hunter and Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, who also served on the board of Burisma. The photo was reportedly taken in 2014.

Epoch Times reporter Mimi Nguyen Ly and Reuters contributed to this report.