Making the rounds today is an unsubstantiated claim from Ukraine that Joe Biden received a large sum of money from Ukrainian gas company Burisma while he was vice president.
This story emerged yesterday after Ukrainian member of parliament Andrei Derkach held a press conference to air these allegations. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, repeated the claims on The Sean Hannity Show on Fox News last night.
Since then, the story has coursed through far-right and conservative news organizations, as well as more traditional publications, like the New York Post.
Derkach claimed Biden had received about $1 million in consulting fees from Burisma, the Ukrainan gas company at the heart of the impeachment investigation. Biden’s son, Hunter, previously served on Burisma’s board, and Trump and his supporters continue to repeat debunked accusations that Joe Biden blocked Ukraine from investigating Burisma to protect his son.
Derkach said the proof of these payments to Biden are documents that show Burisma transferring $900,000 to Rosemont Seneca Partners, a company that Hunter Biden co-founded with Christopher Heinz, former Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, in 2009.
But that’s all there is. The documents Derkach produced don’t show that Rosemont Seneca then made payments to Joe Biden, so these allegations are lacking in evidence.
That’s not stopping the problematic story from spreading. On Fox and Friends today, host Steve Doocy asked Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany if there was proof of any of this. McEnany said she hadn’t seen documents to back up the allegations, and acknowledged, “We don’t know that it’s true yet, no.”
Derkach, who appears to have a reputation for both being pro-Russia and engaging in political corruption, previously voiced debunked claims that Ukraine had helped Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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