On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” host Erin Burnett stated that the new developments regarding payments to the Biden family do not look good.
While speaking to NYU Law Professor Ryan Goodman, Burnett asked, “[O]n a certain level, just as a layperson, you hear this and it doesn’t sound good. There’s a guy whose name is John Robinson Walker, he gets $3 million from a Chinese-based company and proceeds to wire it out to a bunch of people named Biden, one of whom is Hunter Biden, another one is a company that belongs to the president’s brother James Biden, and another amount of money to Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie. So, again, from a layperson, that doesn’t look good, is it damaging legally?”
Goodman responded, “Not necessarily damaging legally. When I look at all of the facts that are alleged in the four-page memo, it looks potentially unethical. But it’s difficult to match it up with any illegality or crime. And for all of the reasons that you say and more, the fact that there’s a pass-through that the money is not even going directly to these members of the Biden family, but through this third person, the timing of it, two months after he steps down as vice president, this is happening with his family and one of the payments is in 2015, that’s starting to look like potentially influence-peddling, but not illegal.”
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