Biden: Johnson should be ‘ashamed’ for suggesting family profited from their name

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden responded to Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) claim that his son Hunter Biden had profited off of their family name, saying the GOP senator should be “ashamed.”

Biden in an interview with WISN 12 News accused Johnson of launching a “last-ditch effort” to smear his family before the election, saying there was no legitimacy “whatsoever” to Johnson’s claim.

“It’s the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family,” Biden said, comparing it to efforts by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on the former vice president.

Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is one of two GOP chairmen who released a controversial report in September focusing on the younger Biden’s business ties.

The senator criticized Biden during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, saying, “Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name.”

“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,” Johnson said.

He further blasted the media for “suppressing the information, which is a scandal in and of itself.”

Biden pushed back on those remarks, noting that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) had previously criticized the GOP probe into Biden’s son for appearing political.

“Even the man who served with him on that committee, the former nominee for the Republican Party, said, ‘there’s no basis to this,’ ” Biden said. “And you know and all and the vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all. Ron should be ashamed of himself.” 

President Trump on Tuesday directly pushed Attorney General William Barr to investigate Hunter Biden after a controversial report from The New York Post alleged that the younger Biden helped broker a meeting between an executive at the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings and his father when Joe Biden was vice president. 

The story has been disputed by Biden’s campaign, which has said his official schedule at the time did not list any such meeting. Other news outlets have not confirmed the Post story, and outside experts have raised concerns about whether it could be part of a foreign disinformation campaign. 

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or proof that Hunter Biden’s role on the Burisma board influenced U.S. policy. 

On Wednesday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he’s told Trump that he didn’t see the probe as a pressing matter and shot down the prospect of any findings coming out before the Nov. 3 election. Meadows also said he did not plan to discuss with Barr about potentially appointing a special counsel.

“It’s not necessarily at the top of our priority list in this last 13 days, but as we’re looking at that, we think an independent special counsel might be the best medicine for this, not that anything would come out before Nov. 3, nor should that be an expectation that any of your listeners would hear,” Meadows said.

However, Trump and his allies have turned Hunter Biden into a central focus in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign as he trails Biden in key swing state polls.

A Marquette University Law Poll released earlier this month found that Trump is trailing Biden by 5 points in Wisconsin, while other polls have shown Biden with a lead in battleground states.