A text message the GOP claims is a smoking gun that puts President Joe Biden at the center of a pay-for-play scandal involving his son and Ukraine was blown up Friday by an in-depth New York Times investigation.
The message, sent by Biden’s son Hunter Biden to his daughter in 2019, suggests that the now president was being paid half of his son's income — nearly $500,000 paid to him for work on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.
“Don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary,” the text, sent to Hunter’s daughter Naomi in January 2019, read.
Republicans investigating what they claim are shady dealings that link the now-president to an influence-peddling scheme in Ukraine, jumped on it.
The investigation, headed by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and now at the center of an impeachment inquiry into Biden, has presented the evidence as proof that the now-president was profiting from his son’s Ukrainian connections.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), at a hearing in September, showed the message to forensic witness Bruce G. Dubinsky and asked, “If you saw a text message like this in a potential money laundering operation, or a potential pay-for-play operation, would you be looking for information related to money going from son to father?”
“Absolutely,” he responded.
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But the Times' investigation showed the message was an inside joke alluding to Hunter Biden’s frugal childhood.
It "shows the extent to which the contents of the communications have been misunderstood or outright distorted,” the Times reported. “And while it does not rule out the possibility that House Republicans could unearth evidence showing wrongdoing by President Biden, it underscores the flimsy nature of the material they have presented publicly so far.”
Through interviews with people close to the Biden family, the Times pieced together the background to the text. It uncovered a story from Hunter’s youth that was often told to his daughters as they grew up.
The text repeated a message Biden passed down to his son while a youth by encouraging him to get a job to pay his way.
The Times spoke to a university roommate of Biden’s who “recalled Hunter telling him and his twin brother 'a million times' that then-Senator Biden encouraged him to work, saying, 'You can keep half of the paycheck, but you have to hand over the other half for ‘room and board.’”
The story was told to Hunter’s children many times as he worried they were getting spoiled, the report said. The text was sent in 2019 during a fight between Hunter and his daughter in which he threatened to cut her off financially.
“Imagine if you read through anyone’s text messages,” Naomi told the Times. “Of course you can twist these things. And of course they’re not going to be understood by everybody, because there’s a lot of personal nuances and inferences.
“He was repeating a story from his university days that I grew up hearing. Do people really think he was texting me things like, ‘I give pop half of the Burisma money’? No. That’s crazy.”