Without any evidence, Democratic Nominee Joe Biden claimed that the “vast majority” of the intelligence community agrees there is “no basis at all” for the allegations of corruption against him and his son Hunter Biden.
“And, you know, and all and the vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said, there’s no basis at all,” Biden claimed.
.@JoeBiden says Sen. @RonJohnsonWI “should be ashamed of himself” for suggesting Biden family “profited off” the family name.
“The vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all." pic.twitter.com/vtKue8chqm
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 21, 2020
Despite his baseless claims, the intelligence community has weighed in on the potentially incriminating evidence presented by the New York Post and others who obtained information from a laptop hard drive reportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
On Tuesday, the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe Tuesday that the information released about Biden and his son Hunter is not a Russian disinformation campaign.
“Let me be clear,” Ratcliffe said on Fox Business, debunking Rep. Adam Schiff’s baseless claims of foreign election interference. “The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that.”
The FBI is also in possession of the laptop.
Despite these claims, Biden continued to criticize the spread of this damning evidence, calling it a “last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family.”
“This is the same garbage [as] Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s henchmen,” Biden said.
Biden’s comments come after Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a statement “on Homeland Security letterhead” claiming that Hunter and the Biden family were profiting from “the Biden name.”
A Senate report released in late September outlined “a long list of the Biden family’s conflicts of interest conducting shady overseas business activity with foreign adversaries while serving at the upper echelons of government, raising significant national security concerns with potentially criminal conduct and threats of extortion.”
Johnson reiterated his position on the issue to Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday night, expressing his concern that the mainstream media was not covering the scandal properly.
“Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name. That’s what’s happening here,” he said. “What we revealed in our 87-page report is a vast web of connections with Chinese nationals, with people all over the world. Again, trading on the Biden name.”
“But it’s these business dealings – you know, our report raises far more questions than it actually answered – but it raises so my troubling issues that the mainstream media is simply not looking at,” Johnson added. “They are suppressing the information, which is a scandal in and of itself.”
It's a scandal in and of itself that the mainstream media is ignoring the vast web of conflicts of interest raised about the Biden family in our 87-page report. Read the report here: https://t.co/obf1Lougv6 pic.twitter.com/8wUVTo5Gyl
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) October 20, 2020
In response, Biden said that “Ron should be ashamed of himself” and referred to GOP outsider Sen. Mitt Romney’s denial of these claims. Romney has historically opposed his Republican colleagues on multiple contentious issues including endorsing the Democrats’ campaign to attempt to impeach Trump.
“Even the man who served with him on that committee, a former nominee for the Republican Party, said there’s no basis to this,” Biden said.