Republicans in the Senate have used the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump to smear former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter for his board appointment to a Ukrainian gas company called Burisma Holdings.
Trump famously urged the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation into Burisma and the Bidens while Trump withheld congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine.
Because any alleged wrongdoing by the Bidens wouldn't justify impeachable offenses committed by the President in order to uncover that wrongdoing, and because the Bidens don't have firsthand knowledge of the actions the President took to investigate them, their testimony would be completely irrelevant.
Hunter Biden was paid around $80,000 a month while working for Burisma. The President's eldest son—Don Jr.—asked what Democrats in Congress would do if Trump Jr. had gotten money from foreign governments during his father's tenure as President.
The problem? Trump Jr. and his little brother Eric are currently Executive Vice Presidents of the Trump Organization.
The Trumps vowed that they wouldn't be making any foreign deals while Donald Trump was President. Junior even said in October of last year:
"We've been international businesspeople for decades, but we can't even do those kinds of deals anymore. We can't even continue, and because we chose not to, because we didn't think it was appropriate. So that's the double standard. The media said, 'Oh, you're enriching yourselves.' We're like, 'We literally stopped.' "
Eric said around the same time:
"When my father became commander in chief of this country, we got out of all international business."
Notably, the President didn't divest his holdings in the Trump Organization after he took the Oath of Office. In the three years since Trump has been President, his sons have continued doing foreign deals on the organization's behalf.
In a piece from the Washington Post fact-checking those claims, Salvador Rizzo debunked the assertions that the Trump Organization hasn't been pursuing foreign deals during Trump's tenure as President.
People on Twitter brought receipts as well.
The Atlantic's David Frum revived a Twitter thread from October detailing Trump Jr.'s previous foreign entanglements.
People were flabbergasted Junior was actually trying to make this argument.
Simply astounding.
American Oligarchs: The Kushners, The Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power is available here.
