Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney for US President Donald Trump, appeared on Fox News' "Watters' World" Saturday night, insisting that 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden were complicit in corruption overseas.
Referring to the former Vice President, currently a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination after a surge in popularity that was marked by his spate of wins in the south during Super Tuesday on 3 March, Giuliani told the host:
"The man has something wrong with him and it’s serious… His family has been stealing for 30 years. There are at least eight cases in which the family made hundreds, thousands and millions off selling his public office."
Giuliani unequivocally slammed the Bidens as part of an "ongoing criminal enterprise, saying:
"They monetize his public office. When he’s in the Senate they do it with a real estate company, they do it with a bank. They do it with a private equity fund that goes bankrupt and one guy in it is running a Ponzi scheme. And they make millions from it… And then they do it with Iraq, and they do it with Ukraine, and they do it with China.”
Giuliani brought up the possibility that Joe Biden was unaware of any alleged corruption by his son, Hunter.
"Now, it is possible, it is actually possible, that when he said, “I didn’t know about it,” he’s so out of it he didn’t know about it," said Trump's personal attorney.
As the host, Jesse Watters, questioned Giuliani whether he conceded that Joe Biden’s suggested oblivion to alleged corruption schemes set in motion by his son, and possibly his brother, James Biden, could feed into speculations regarding the 2020 White House hopeful’s mental faculties, Giuliani responded:
"If he really doesn’t know that [James Biden and Hunter Biden] were selling him out for 20 years and became multimillionaires, then he belongs somewhere else… Not in the White House."
Rudy Giuliani's latest tirade against the Bidens came in the wake of reports that Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee were gearing up for a subpoena seeking information on a former Ukrainian diplomat linked to consulting firm Blue Star Strategies, that allegedly used Hunter Biden as a conduit to gain access to the US State Department while his father was vice president.
US Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was reported by Fox News to have voiced his readiness to back the Senate probe after talks with Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman, Senator Ron Johnson, overcoming his earlier reservations that the investigation had the appearance of looking political.
According to the report, the committee is set to vote on Wednesday on the subpoena to Andrii Telizhenko, formerly a consultant for public affairs firm Blue Star Strategies that worked with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that hired Biden's son Hunter.
Earlier in the month, Senate Republicans declared a new phase of their investigation targeting Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in connection with his ties to a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma.
The Bidens have rejected all accusations and denied any wrongdoing.
On 18 December, Democrats in the House of Representatives impeached US President Donald Trump, claiming that he had made efforts to enlist Ukraine’s help in investigating allegations of corrupt business practices by his 2020 presidential rival Joe Biden's son Hunter in exchange for military aid to Kiev.
Trump was subsequently acquitted by the Senate on both articles of impeachment.