President Donald Trump says US Attorney General William Barr should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate an alleged influence-peddling scandal involving his Democrat rival, Joe Biden, before the Nov. 3 election.
“We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with Fox News. “He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election.”
Trump’s statement came one day after 11 House Republicans wrote a letter to Barr, urging him to immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Joe Biden allowed his son Hunter to peddle access to him during his eight years as vice president and whether he received foreign money. Lawmakers asked that the special counsel also probe any such alleged corruption that surfaces concerning Biden’s 36-year career in the US Senate.
But with just two weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, it’s unclear what a special counsel could determine and report publicly before voters cast their ballots. The Mueller investigation took 674 days before reporting that it was unable to find evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Bill and Hillary Clinton were investigated for 1,693 days before special counsel Kenneth Starr released his report to Congress.
“This has to be done early, so the attorney general must act,” Trump said of the Biden probe.
Trump also blasted US Representative Adam Schiff (D-California) for calling allegations against Biden part of a Russian “disinformation” plot. “He is so sick,” Trump said of Schiff. “We went through 2 ½ years of that, plus. And this guy, he ought to be put away, or he ought to be . . . something should happen with him. I watched him look straight at the camera and say it. And he laughs at it. They laugh in the backrooms at it.”
Trump said the alleged influence peddling by Biden’s family is too big to be dismissed as something that Joe Biden didn’t know about. Reports about the alleged scandal surfaced in the past week, largely based on emails reportedly obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had been left at a Delaware repair shop.
“I mean, his son walked around like a vacuum cleaner . . . and look, this is the laptop from hell,” Trump said.
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