Biden campaign releases video to explain ‘what really happened in Ukraine’

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on Tuesday released a video purporting to explain “what really happened in Ukraine” as the campaign pushes back on expected GOP arguments during President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

In the four-minute video, Biden’s rapid response director Andrew Bates calls former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin “the embodiment of the corruption that has been hurting Ukraine’s government for a very long time” and cites calls for his firing from the international community and Republican senators.

“Joe Biden is the person who got him out of office. It was a monumental, international, bipartisan, anti-corruption victory,” Bates says in the video, noting that Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and then-Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) all signed onto the effort.

The aide called claims by Trump that Biden’s efforts to remove Shokin were an attempt to protect his son Hunter Biden from investigation “horses—t,” noting that Shokin’s removal was official U.S. policy and that Shokin “wasn’t investigating” Burisma, the natural gas company on whose board the younger Biden sat.

Take a seat, grab yourself a drink, and listen to our campaign’s Rapid Response Director @AndrewBatesNC explain what really happened in Ukraine. #TeamJoe pic.twitter.com/y82fcTGNvK

— Team Joe ⛄️(Text JOE to 30330) (@TeamJoe) January 21, 2020

The video comes shortly after a memo to media organizations by the Biden campaign calling on journalists not to reference allegations against Biden without also saying they have been debunked.

“[Trump’s] objective was to pressure the Ukrainian government into spreading a malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory: that Vice President Biden engaged in wrongdoing when he executed official United States policy to remove a corrupt prosecutor from office,” communications director Kate Bedingfield wrote in the memo to reporters and editors.

Trump and his GOP allies in Congress have repeatedly criticized Biden for calling for the Ukrainian prosecutor’s firing. Biden and his son, meanwhile, have both denied any wrongdoing and no evidence has emerged that the then-vice president acted with his son’s interests in mind.