Though the mainstream media has ignored it amid their concern over President Donald Trump’s now-infamous July phone call with Ukraine, Joe Biden once bragged about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma Holdings — a company the then-vice president’s son, Hunter, was working with — fired.
Now, it has been revealed that several former officials who worked closely with Biden knew as soon as those remarks were uttered that they’d come back to haunt him.
Biden: The Gaffe Machine
According to BuzzFeed News, three unnamed former officials who worked with Biden on Ukraine issues during the Obama administration knew immediately that Biden’s comments never should have been said.
The remarks from Biden — which are indisputable and on video — came during an appearance at a Council on Foreign Relations event in January 2018. Biden spoke about a visit he paid to Kyiv in 2015 to deliver $1 billion in aid from the U.S. — and how he demanded the prosecutor be fired before Ukraine received the loan.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours,'” Biden recounted. “‘If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b***h, he got fired.”
Video of that braggadocious commentary has reportedly been circulating around Europe and the U.S. ever since.
“Classic Joe Biden”
Of course, the former officials made it clear that they didn’t believe Joe Biden — or his son, for that matter — had done anything wrong, and repeated the dubious narrative that the whole of Europe and the U.S. wanted the prosecutor fired.
Still, they knew the remarks would cause problems.
“It was classic Joe Biden,” one former official told BuzzFeed.
Indeed, it’s hard to hide the appearance of impropriety.
“I obviously believed that there was nothing improper, but, especially because there is so much scrutiny, you never want there to be anything that appears in any way inappropriate,” one of the anonymous officials said.
Just as they had suspected, those comments have indeed come back to haunt Biden in the middle of his campaign for the presidency — and odds are, this is only the beginning.