As the war in Ukraine rages on and US President Joe Biden rallies Western allies to stop Putin’s atrocities against its neighbor, former President Donald Trump decided that this is the perfect moment to solicit Russia to help him get dirt on his political rival.
In a new interview with disgraced far-right reporter John Solomon, which was flagged by Politico, Trump called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release information regarding alleged dealings between Eastern European oligarchs and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.
During the interview, conducted at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, “Trump cited the findings of a controversial, highly politicized investigation by Senate Republicans into the Bidens, which was published just weeks before the 2020 election and produced little new evidence of wrongdoing,” politico reported, adding that the twice-impeached former president “promoted dubious claims of foreign business dealings by Hunter Biden, specifically alleging that he received millions of dollars from the wife of Moscow’s late mayor, Yury Luzhkov.”
“She gave him $3.5 million so now I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it,” Trump said in the interview per Politico. “I think we should know that answer.”
However, Trump failed to mention that he himself sought to do business with Luzhkov’s government in the late 1990s,” and pursued high-profile real estate deals in Russia as recently as 2016, including a proposed Trump Tower Moscow,” according to Politico.
Trump’s new request of Putin raises the specter of those scandals, as the Russian president plods on with his more than monthlong war in Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s forces continue to fend off the invaders.
Trump last month described Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” “very smart,” and “savvy.”
Read the full report on Politico.