Biden to Trump: "I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life"
23 October 2020
Former VP Joe Biden pushed back Thursday against allegations from President Trump, saying he had never profited from foreign sources. "Nothing was unethical," Biden told debate moderator Kristen Welker about his son Hunter's work in Ukraine while he was vice president.
Why it matters: The Trump campaign is seeking to use recent allegations that Biden was involved in his son's foreign business dealings to paint the former vice president as corrupt. Earlier on Thursday, Hunter Biden's former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, released a statement saying Joe Biden's claims that he never discussed overseas business dealings with his son were "false."
The big picture: Trump's attempts to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens ultimately culminated in his impeachment last year in the Democratic-led House and acquittal in the Republican-led Senate.
What they're saying: "With regard to Ukraine, we had this whole question about whether or not, because [Hunter] was on the board, I later learned, of Burisma, a company, that somehow I had done something wrong," Biden said.
- "Yet every single solitary person when [Trump] was going through his impeachment, testifying under oath who worked for him, said I did my job impeccably. I carried out U.S. policy. Not one single solitary thing was out of line. Not a single thing, number one," he continued.
- "Number two, the guy who got in trouble in Ukraine was this guy, trying to bribe the Ukrainian government to say something negative about me, which they would not do and did not do, because it never, ever, ever happened."
The other side: Biden in turn accused the president of making money from foreign sources, citing a report in the New York Times that Trump has a secret bank account in China. Trump defended himself, saying he was "a businessman doing business" and claiming the account was closed in 2015 before he became president.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.