Fox News on Monday obtained and published a photo apparently from the summer of 2014 that shows then-vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden with Devon Archer, who like the younger Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company that has become a focal point in President Trump’s impeachment inquiry.
The photo, which was reportedly taken in August 2014, shows four men, including Archer and the Bidens, golfing in the Hamptons. Biden, currently one of the top contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, has said in recent weeks that he and his son had never discussed his son’s business interests in Ukraine. Hunter Biden has said previously that he’s spoken to his father “just once” about his business in Ukraine.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden told Fox News earlier this month. “I know Trump deserves to be investigated. He is violating every basic norm of a president. You should be asking him why is he on the phone with a foreign leader, trying to intimidate a foreign leader. You should be looking at Trump.”
During a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky to help his administration investigate allegations that the former vice president used his position to help Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings avoid a corruption probe soon after the younger Biden was appointed to its board of directors.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi last week announced the launch of a formal impeachment inquiry amid accusations that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating the Bidens.
Zelensky has since said that “nobody pushed me” regarding the investigation, and Trump has claimed the same.
Biden, for his part, has admitted that in the spring of 2016, during his tenure as vice president, he called on Ukraine to fire the top prosecutor investigating the energy company paying his son. Biden suggested he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if the country did not fire the prosecutor, who was accused by the State Department and U.S. allies in Europe of being soft on corruption.