2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, did nothing unethical or illegal with regard to their ties to Ukraine, and are being used as a distraction by President Trump and the GOP, said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., during a Sunday television interview.
Murphy appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where host Jake Tapper asked if it was appropriate for Hunter Biden to have served as a board member for the Ukranian energy company, Burisma Holdings, which paid him $50,000 a month while his father was vice president.
“Well, I think in an interview Hunter Biden, himself, admitted that he had possibly made a mistake,” Murphy replied. “But let’s be clear, Hunter Biden didn’t do anything illegal and his father, the vice president, didn’t do anything illegal or unethical.
“And all of these attacks on the Bidens and the effort to bring the whistleblower in to testify are just an attempt to try to put more chum in the water and distract from the corrupt scheme that is at heart of this inquiry.”
Murphy claimed congressional impeachment hearings have already revealed the president’s crimes and declared him guilty of extortion and election interference.
“It’s now absolutely clear what happened,” he said earlier in the segment. “The president was using taxpayer dollars, security aid to Ukraine, and a White House meeting in order to extort the Ukrainian president into trying to interfere in the 2020 election, and trying to help the president destroy the Bidens and the Clintons.”
Murphy also accused the White House of violating the law to prevent potential witnesses from testifying and said those who received direct orders from the president are being hidden from Congress.
“The White House is going to rely on this idea that the people who were getting the direct orders from the president… are largely not testifying before the committee,” he said. “There’s a reason for that. The White House isn’t allowing them to testify… The White House is violating the law in keeping them from the impeachment inquiry.
“Why? Because they know that those are the individuals who were actually getting most of the direct orders from the president and they don’t want that to be on the record,” Murphy continued. “So the White House can’t have it both ways.”