President Trump has not asked Attorney General William Barr to open an investigation into the Biden family, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday, despite his comments earlier in the week urging the attorney general to look into the matter.
“No he has not. The president wants these things to be looked into, and the media is really the avenue that should be doing that at this point,” McEnany told reporters.
“It’s up to the attorney general as to how he pursues this, and the FBI, but we just want justice and we want the American people to have a full picture of what’s at stake,” she added.
Trump on Tuesday called on Barr to promptly look into Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, over unproven corruption allegations.
“We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act and he’s got to act fast,” Trump said on Fox News. “He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday that assigning a special prosecutor to the case “has merit,” but he downplayed that it is a pressing matter in the White House and shot down the prospect of any findings coming out before Election Day.
The president and his campaign have leaned hard into attacks on Hunter Biden, citing text messages and correspondence that they claim show Joe Biden was aware of his son’s foreign business dealings. But there is no evidence that Joe Biden was involved while he was vice president or that it influenced policy, and The Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday that documents show Joe Biden did not have any role in his son’s business interests.
The Trump campaign hosted a guest at Thursday’s debate who claimed Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings in 2017. The man, Tony Bobulinski, said he would cooperate with the FBI and Republican senators looking into the matter.