CNN host Jake Tapper confronted Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin over the official’s defense of President Donald Trump’s actions in relation to former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine.
“What I do find inappropriate is the fact that Vice President Biden at the time’s son [sic] did very significant business dealings in Ukraine,” Mnuchin said during a Sunday appearance on “State of the Union.” “I, for one, find that to be concerning and to me that is the issue perhaps that should be further investigated.”
“I don’t understand,” Tapper responded. “So it is okay for Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to do business all over the world and okay for Ivanka Trump to have copyrights approved all over the world while President Trump is President, but while Vice President Joe Biden was Vice President his son shouldn’t have been able to do business dealings?”
“You’re setting a precedent that the president is violating,” Tapper added.
Mnuchin responded that there is a “difference” between the two situations because Trump’s business dealings predated his presidency.
Tapper points out Mnuchin’s hypocrisy in his defense of Trump’s actions on Ukraine/Biden pic.twitter.com/H09JR5BE3l
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 23, 2019
Trump and his allies have been trying to spread a baseless allegation that Biden tried to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor due to an investigation into a company on whose board his son sat to deflate the damning details from the President’s interactions with the Ukrainian president. But there was never any proof that Hunter Biden was a subject of that investigation, and it seems to have been shelved before Biden became one of several major international leaders calling for the prosecutor’s ouster.
