President Donald Trump on Wednesday seized on an unverified report about Joe Biden's son Hunter, using it to repeat his often-told conspiracy theory about the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
At a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump referred to what he called "explosive documents" published Wednesday by the New York Post.
Trump claimed that the report shows that "Joe Biden has been blatantly lying about his involvement in his son's corrupt business dealings." In a phone interview with the conservative news outlet Newsmax, Trump said, "They're crooks."
The Post cited an alleged email that it reported came from a copy of a hard drive. NBC News has not verified the report or seen the email.
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There has been no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden, which campaign spokesman Andrew Bates highlighted Wednesday.
"Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as 'not legitimate' and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath," Bates said in a statement.
"The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani — whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported — claimed to have such materials," Bates added.
"Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place," he said.
