After Trump’s acquittal: Republican senators go after Hunter Biden

Now that U.S. President Donald Trump has been acquitted in the impeachment trial, Republicans in the Senate have opened the hunt for Hunter Biden. They requested and received from the Treasury Department sensitive financial information about the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Noteworthy: President Trump’s tax return was more likely not to be released by the Ministry of Finance.

The Republican quest already started in November and actually continued where Trump’s stopped last summer. Trump then became discredited because he asked his Ukrainian counterpart Volodimir Zelenski to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of his possible opponent during the upcoming presidential election.

Whistleblower

According to a whistleblower, Trump threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if the country did not come across the bridge, which led Democrats to initiate impeachment proceedings for abuse of power. This week, however, Trump was acquitted in the Senate – where the Republicans have the majority.

The senators now continue Trump’s original train of thought, claiming that Joe Biden – when he was Vice President under Barack Obama – used his influence to benefit his son. Hunter Biden served on the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, while his father was involved in U.S. foreign policy in Eastern Europe.

According to Trump, Biden would also have fired a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Something that Biden denies and, in the meantime, has also been dismissed by fact-checkers. So far, there is no evidence that Hunter Biden did anything wrong.

Yahoo News was the first to report on Thursday that the Treasury Department had released confidential information about Hunter Biden at the request of Republicans Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, the chairmen of the Treasury and Senate Homeland Security Committees, respectively. They want to know if some financial institutions have received any reports of suspicious activity surrounding Hunter Biden.

Conflict of interest

While Trump’s lawyers merely argued during the deposition process that the position of Hunter Biden on the board of the power company seemed to indicate a conflict of interest, the Republican senators now seem to be really looking for evidence of that.

A spokesman for Grassley didn’t want to say whether Biden’s tax return was also requested. The Ministry of Finance did not want to comment on the case.

Last year, Finance Minister Steve Mnuchin blocked a request from the Democrats to release the president’s tax return. According to Mnuchin, there was no legitimate legal reason for this, and the Democrats only wanted to embarrass the president. A lawsuit is still in progress.