Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) on Monday explained away his request for records of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden‘s work in Ukraine by saying “that’s the way it works in politics.”
“I like Joe Biden, I like him a lot, I think he’s a fine man,” Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said. “I’m not saying Joe did anything wrong but I want to see the transcripts. But if there’s nothing there I’ll be the first one to say there’s nothing there. But we’re not going to live in a country where only one party gets investigated.”
Last week, the South Carolina Republican wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting documents relating to phone conversations Biden had with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko about the United States Government’s demands to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Graham also demanded access to records of a 2016 meeting Devon Archer — a business associate of Hunter Biden and a board member of Cyprus-based Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma — had with then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
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Graham also said in a tweet that he believes Hunter Biden was not held to the same standard a Republican would likely be subjected to for his work as a board member of a foreign company.
There has thus far been no evidence that Biden and his son committed any wrongdoing in Ukraine, despite President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and several other prominent Republicans accusing the former vice president and his son of corruption. However, Hunter Biden did recently admit he exercised “poor judgement” while serving as a board member of Burisma.
Biden also said in an interview on CNN last week that he felt “embarrassed” for Graham because of his request for documents, and accused Trump of “holding power” over the veteran GOP Senator, who has voiced increasingly strong support for the president in recent months.
“I am disappointed and quite frankly I am angered by the fact, he knows me, he knows my son, he knows there’s nothing to this,” Biden told the network. “Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life.”
