Joe Biden, his son Hunter and an 'email' from Ukraine: the keys to Trump's October surprise

A Trump supporter shows a photo of Hunter Biden in line for a president's rally in Erie, Ohio. BRENDAN MCDERMID / Reuters

"

Biden's Secret

."

"A Ukrainian executive thanked Hunter Biden for the opportunity to meet with his vice president dad."

The October surprise of the Trump campaign, as those informational bombs intended to change the course of a presidential campaign at the last minute, came on Wednesday the 14th. It was on the front page of the

Rupert Murdoch's American tabloid, one of the nation's largest newspapers.

It was a new twist on a well-known line of attack: that of the Democratic candidate's relationship with Ukraine, and the possible conflicts of interest derived from the presence of his son Hunter on the board of Burisma, a gas company in the former Soviet country. , during the years in which the father held the vice presidency of the United States.

Twitter blocked the dissemination of information on its platform, claiming that its rules prohibit sharing

material

but later he rectified.

This Wednesday, in a hearing before the senators, the CEO of the technology company has admitted that the initial decision was "incorrect."

President Trump used the story, without much success, to attack his rival in the last presidential debate.

And he repeatedly complains that the media are silencing what, in a tweet this Wednesday, he defined as "the biggest and most credible story anywhere in the world."

But, what exactly is the accusation with which the president and his team have wanted to turn a campaign around, that of the elections next Tuesday, which the polls make it difficult for him?

The email.

The

story

is based on a brief electronic correspondence, notably an April 2015 email, allegedly sent to Hunter Biden by Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma adviser.

The

reads like this: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to [Washington] DC and giving me a chance to meet your father and spend some time together.

It is truly an honor and a pleasure ”.

From the tenor of the message it is not deduced if the supposed invitation was specified and the meeting took place.

The Biden campaign has assured in a statement that it has reviewed the agenda of the former vice president of those months and that no meeting like the one described in the tabloid is listed.

Rudy Giuliani's hand.

The origin of the story, and that is part of his problem, is in Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York and Trump's personal lawyer, who has spent years spreading unsubstantiated accusations of corruption against the Bidens.

In the midst of the Russian plot that has consumed much of Trump's mandate, his faithful squire Giuliani, whose shady contacts in the former Soviet country are being investigated by the US justice system, has defended a discredited theory that it was Ukraine and not Russia that that he interfered in the 2016 elections, and that he did it to help Hillary Clinton.

He has also repeatedly accused Joe Biden of allowing his son to get rich by trading his father's influence.

According to the

the

were obtained from the hard drive of a computer that Hunter Biden would have left to repair in a Wilmington (Delaware) store in April 2019 and that he would never have gone to collect.

The store owner, who cannot assure his client was Hunter Biden, allegedly made a copy of the hard drive and provided it to a lawyer for Giuliani and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

He also claims that he contacted the FBI through an intermediary to send them a copy.

The problem with Giuliani.

The US intelligence services warned the White House last year that the lawyer was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to

The warning stemmed from Giuliani's interactions with Russian intelligence during a trip to Ukraine in December 2019, where the lawyer was trying to obtain dirty laundry from the Bidens.

US intelligence conveyed its concern that Giuliani was being used by the Russians to supply false information to the president.

White House National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien warned Trump that any information Giuliani brought from Ukraine could be tainted by Russia.

"Do what you want," he said, "but your friend Giuliani has been worked by Russian agents in Ukraine."

Those warnings now take on weight, since the information Giuliani was looking for in Ukraine is similar to that contained in the correspondence that the lawyer himself provided to the tabloid.

The FBI is now investigating whether the emails are part of a foreign intelligence operation.

The director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said last week on Fox News that there is no evidence to confirm that it is foreign interference.

In the

newsroom

Steve Bannon, recently indicted by federal prosecutors for a crime of fraud unrelated to this plot, informed the

of the hard drive in late September.

On Sunday, October 11, Giuliani delivered a copy of a hard drive to the tabloid.

He assures that he chose the

"because either no one else would have picked it up or, if they had looked at them, they would have spent as much time as they could trying to contradict it before publishing it."

Several veteran journalists of the newsroom expressed their doubts about the material and questioned whether enough had been done to verify its authenticity.

Bruce Golding, a reporter at the newspaper since 2007, did not allow his signature to appear in the information because he doubted the credibility of the story, according to

.

At least one other reporter, according to the same newspaper, refused to have his signature included.

The piece was published at the end signed by Emma-Jo Morris, deputy chief of policy who arrived last April from Fox News, and Gabrielle Fonrouge, a reporter for the

since 2014. The first had not signed anything in the newspaper until that Wednesday .

Fonrouge, according to

sources

did not know that the article would bear his signature until after it was published.

The controversy surrounding Hunter Biden.

In 2014, a pro-European social mobilization and anti-corruption ousted the president from power in Kiev, Víktor Yanukovich, an ally of Russia, a country that had just annexed Crimea through a referendum considered illegal by the international community, giving rise to an armed conflict in the eastern Ukraine with pro-Russian rebels backed by Moscow.

Joe Biden, then Barack Obama's vice president, traveled to Kiev on several occasions during that time and worked with other international figures to prop up the government that emerged after the so-called Maidan revolution.

Coinciding with his father's mission in Ukraine, lawyer Hunter Biden accepted a position on the board of Burisma, one of the largest natural gas companies in the country and owned by Mikola Zlochevski, an oligarch close to former President Yanukovych.

The appointment of Hunter Biden, who continued with the company until April of last year, was highly controversial, but the White House rejected that it involved a conflict.

Hunter Biden himself acknowledged in October last year that, although he did nothing wrong, his work in Ukraine was "an error of judgment."

In a recent report, Republican senators considered that it may have been a conflict of interest but found no evidence that Hunter Biden's employment relationship with the company had influenced US policy.

The people of Trump, in whose 2016 campaign US intelligence has documented a massive interference operation by the Kremlin to help him get to the White House, has long promoted a discredited theory according to which Joe Biden lobbied for his removal from office. a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect Burisma from an investigation.

It is true that he pressed.

But he did so, in coordination with Obama and other Western leaders, precisely because it was considered that the prosecutor was not acting forcefully against corruption.

Does the

incriminate

If it were proven that the current Democratic candidate met with a representative from Burisma, as the

might suggest

Joe Biden would have lied, as he has insisted in the past that he never discussed his business in Ukraine with his son.

But there is no trace of the alleged meeting and from the tenor of the message it does not necessarily follow that it had taken place.

And even if it did take place, Biden would not be the only American politician to meet with Pozharskyi.

He was part of a Burisma entourage that was

congressional workers to try to show that Burisma was not a corrupt company.

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