President Donald Trump’s legal team turned their focus to the Bidens during the Senate impeachment trial on Monday.
Trump attorneys Pam Bondi and Eric Herschmann used their time to argue that former Vice President Joe Biden should be investigated for corruption.
Bondi focused on Hunter Biden and his role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while Joe Biden was vice president. The attorneys had no evidence that Biden improperly used his role to help his son in Ukraine other than the “appearance of conflict,” Politico reported.
The two attorneys played clips of Joe Biden discussing his work in Ukraine for the Obama administration and his son’s interview about Burisma.
Witnesses that testified during the House impeachment probe agreed that the conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that Biden acted improperly to help his son was false and baseless.
Biden slams Trump lawyers:
A Biden spokesperson hit out at Bondi for pushing long-debunked conspiracy theories at Trump’s trial.
"We didn't realize that Breitbart was expanding into Ted Talk knockoffs. Here on planet Earth, the conspiracy theory that Bondi repeated has been conclusively refuted,” campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Joe Biden was instrumental to a bipartisan and international anti-corruption victory. It's no surprise that such a thing is anathema to President Trump."
“The first part just seemed to be a big 2020 campaign commercial list of the president's campaign highlights and bashing the Bidens,” added Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy. “From the very beginning it seems as if the president was so focused on Joe Biden partly because he knew Joe Biden was a strong candidate.”
Republicans hope trial wounds Democrats:
“Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening and I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus goers, will they be supporting vice president Biden at this point?” asked Iowa Republican Joni Ernst.
“I was watching Elizabeth [Warren] and Bernie [Sanders] and Michael [Bennet] and Amy [Klobuchar] and they were really eyes wide open during that part of it," Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso said of Biden’s challengers, who are prevented from campaigning while the trial is in sessions. "I think it's going to be harmful. It can't be a positive. Certainly not in November if he's the nominee and I think even in terms of getting the nomination."
