Emails leaked by the New York Post create new war front between Trump and Biden
The news report, which appeared just three weeks before the election, was based on material provided by Trump’s Republican allies. For months, the president has been trying to tarnish Biden’s campaign with his son’s personal life
On Wednesday — October 14 — social media exploded around a New York Post (NYP) news report about Joe Biden. The Democratic candidate for the US Presidency reportedly had contact with “a senior official” from a Ukrainian energy company. It turns out that this polemic information became the focus of a controversy after the dismissal of the prosecutor investigating the company.
The contact between the former vice president of Barack Obama and the Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi was through his son Hunter Biden. This was revealed by an email cited by the NYP in its publication that also involves his other son, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Pozharskyi, a former adviser to the board of Burisma Holdings, to which Biden’s son belonged, thanked Hunter in an April 2015 email for inviting him to Washington. Also for giving him “the opportunity to meet his father”.
This happened about a year after Hunter joined the gas company that at that time — 2015 and 2016 — was under investigation by the Ukrainian attorney general, Viktor Shokin.
According to Trump’s circle, Biden would have forced the dismissal of the prosecutor who was investigating the company through a telephone call to the former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. Shokin stepped down as attorney general in March 2016.
An email from May 2014 also indicated that Pozharskyi sought Hunter’s advice on ways he could “use his influence” on behalf of Burisma.
According to the NYP, the communication contradicts a claim by Biden that he has not spoken with his son about his businesses. However, the email does not detail the scope of the meeting or whether Biden spoke with his son about it.
The publication served a purpose, immediately, the Republican candidate Donald Trump accused Biden for alleged links with the Ukrainian company. He used this argument to say that the former vice president lobbied for the then prosecutor to be removed and thus “benefit” his son Hunter.
Fake news against Biden?
Among the emails cited by the NYP stands out one sent by the Ukrainian executive on April 17, 2015. There he thanks Hunter for “inviting me to Washington, giving me the opportunity to meet your father and spend time together. It is truly an honor and a pleasure”.
These emails leave Biden in a complex situation, who always denied any direct involvement with his son’s work in Ukraine. “I never discussed anything that had to do with Ukraine. We have always kept everything separate”, Biden said in a debate during the nomination race.
Last September, two chairmen of the Republican Senate committee tried to revive the allegations surrounding Hunter’s Ukraine deals. But their report broke little ‘new ground’ when it discovered that his role (Hunter Biden) on the Burisma board of directors, put State Department officials in an “uncomfortable” position.
Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign command rejected information reported by the NYP about his sons, Joseph R. and Hunter. The complaint by the Democrats led social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to consider the publication as dubious and immediately limited access to the article.
The news report, which appeared just three weeks before the election, was based on material provided by Trump’s Republican allies. For months, the president has been trying to tarnish Biden’s campaign with his son’s personal life.
Republicans allege that Biden “had met with an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter served”. However, when reviewing Biden’s schedules and meetings, that meeting never happened.
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Democratic campaign spoke on the issue. “We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official hours from now on and no meeting was held, as the New York Post alleges”.
However, other sources argue that the alleged “email” that Pozharskyi sent to Hunter would be unfounded. The argument is that “the authenticity of the e-mail correspondence cited by the NYP could not be independently verified”, adds an information published by The New York Times.
Why was the information blocked on social networks?
Hours after the article was published, Facebook reported that it decided to limit the distribution of the story on its platform to verify if the claims were true.
For its part, Twitter said it blocked the article because it included personal phone numbers and email addresses. This fact violates its privacy rules by violating its policy on hacked or pirated materials.
The actions of Facebook and Twitter immediately provoked strong reactions from Republicans in the United States. The Trump caucus ensures that social media platforms censor them.
According to the NYP, the article is based on emails recovered from a computer that supposedly belonged to Hunter. It was reportedly taken to a service technician in the state of Delaware and was never picked up. The information reached the former mayor of New York — and Trump’s lawyer — Rudy Giuliani, who gave a copy to the New York newspaper.
Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who currently chairs a Federal Rights and Oversight subcommittee, sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. In it he denounced that “they not only prohibit their users from sharing the news, but also the New York Post the opportunity to post their own content”.
Added to the blocking of the publication was the blocking of the personal account of the White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who shared the story. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a staunch Trump ally, called the Twitter action “despicable” and called it “the real election interference”.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been under fire from Trump and other Republicans for years for allegedly censoring their views. The companies, located in liberal Silicon Valley, deny those claims.
The NYP denounced that Twitter not only blocked access to its news about the emails between Hunter and the Ukrainian company. Apparently, it also showed users trying to access the news an alert warning that the newspaper’s page could be “not secure”.
This Thursday-October 15- the NYP again published other information about the emails they accessed, which according to them “reveal how Hunter Biden tried to collect a lot of money on behalf of the name of the family” by relating to the Chinese company CEFC China Energy .
Hunter, meanwhile, remains part of the campaign because Trump insists that his opponent’s son — who leads him in polls by more than 10 percentage points — is involved in shady deals. He also says that he would have achieved everything thanks to the help of his father as vice president of the United States during the Obama administration.
