Trump's allegations about Joe and Hunter Biden don't seem to have any merit or even make much sense


President Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and members of Trump's Cabinet are pretty open about wanting a scandal involving Trump personally pressuring — possibly extorting — Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner to challenge him in next year's presidential race, to be a story about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and alleged "corruption." Reporters have been digging around for months, and there just doesn't seem to be much there.
The allegation from Trump and Giuliani is that Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a state prosecutor to quash an investigation into a Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, whose gas company Burisma hired Hunter Biden to sit on its board of directors in 2014. Some of that is true — Joe Biden has openly said he successfully pressured Ukraine in 2016 to fire the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, or lose $1 billion in U.S. grant money.
But the first problem for Trump's accusation, The Wall Street Journal reports, is that "Shokin had dragged his feet into those [Zlochevsky] investigations, Western diplomats said, and effectively squashed one in London by failing to cooperate with U.K. authorities." In fact, Shokin was widely viewed as corrupt and ineffective. "The whole G-7, the IMF, the EBRD, everybody was united that Shokin must go, and the spokesman for this was Joe Biden," says Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Zlochevsky's allies were "relieved" by Shokin's dismissal, The New York Times reports, because while "Shokin was not aggressively pursuing investigations into Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma," he "was using the threat of prosecution to try to solicit bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky and his team." Zlochevsky has never been convicted of any wrongdoing, despite "a push by Obama administration officials for the United States to support criminal investigations by Ukrainian and British authorities, and possibly for the United States to start its own investigation, into the energy company, Burisma," and Zlochevsky, the Times adds. Biden never did anything to deter those efforts, his former colleagues say.
Hunter Biden, who has never been accused of wrongdoing in Ukraine, "is no longer on the Burisma payroll," The Washington Post notes. "In the Trump era, a different cast of characters is winning contracts in Ukraine. One of the players? Giuliani," who has "found ready clients in Ukraine, where people think that U.S. political wisdom can get results."
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
Jared and Ivanka's Albanian island
Under The Radar The deal to develop Sazan has been met with widespread opposition
-
Storm warning
Feature The U.S. is headed for an intense hurricane season. Will a shrunken FEMA and NOAA be able to respond?
-
U.S. v. Skrmetti: Did the trans rights movement overreach?
Feature The Supreme Court upholds a Tennessee law that bans transgender care for minors, dealing a blow to trans rights
-
Trump sues LA over immigration policies
Speed Read He is suing over the city's sanctuary law, claiming it prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities
-
Obama, Bush and Bono eulogize USAID on final day
Speed Read The US Agency for International Development, a humanitarian organization, has been gutted by the Trump administration
-
The last words and final moments of 40 presidents
The Explainer Some are eloquent quotes worthy of the holders of the highest office in the nation, and others... aren't
-
Senate advances GOP bill that costs more, cuts more
Speed Read The bill would make giant cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, leaving 11.8 million fewer people with health coverage
-
Canadian man dies in ICE custody
Speed Read A Canadian citizen with permanent US residency died at a federal detention center in Miami
-
GOP races to revise megabill after Senate rulings
Speed Read A Senate parliamentarian ruled that several changes to Medicaid included in Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" were not permissible
-
Supreme Court lets states ax Planned Parenthood funds
Speed Read The court ruled that Planned Parenthood cannot sue South Carolina over the state's effort to deny it funding
-
Trump plans Iran talks, insists nuke threat gone
Speed Read 'The war is done' and 'we destroyed the nuclear,' said President Trump