Here's who is in that photo from the Nickelback meme Trump tweeted to take a swing at Joe Biden
- President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out against the impeachment inquiry threatening his presidency, characterized a political rival as treasonous, and publicly threatened the whistleblower who filed a complaint over his effort to pressure Ukraine into probing one of his main political rivals.
- Then the President of the United States capped off a head-spinning day by tweeting out a Nickelback meme taking a swing at former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading 2020 Democratic candidates.
- The photo in the meme has been widely circulated among conservative news outlets in recent days as evidence that Biden used the power of his office to halt a corruption case threatening his son's business fortunes.
- Here are five key points adding context to the 2014 photo.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out against the impeachment inquiry threatening his presidency, characterized a political rival as treasonous, and publicly threatened the whistleblower who filed a complaint over his effort to pressure Ukraine into probing one of his main political rivals.
The President of the United States capped off a head-spinning day by tweeting out a Nickelback meme taking a swing at former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading 2020 Democratic candidates.
The meme starts with a clip of Biden saying he never discussed with his son, Hunter Biden, anything of his business dealings in Ukraine. In 2014, Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma, an energy company that was investigated for corruption at one point.
Read more: A Ukraine gas company tied to Joe Biden's son is at the center of the Trump-whistleblower scandal
Then it shifts to a popular meme: A clip of a Nickelback music video, where singer Chad Kroeger sings a line from "Photograph," while holding a picture frame. In this case the photo shows a 2014 picture of Biden alongside his son, Hunter Biden, an unnamed man, and a man labeled in the photo as "Ukraine gas exec."
The "Ukraine gas exec" is named Devon Archer; he was previously business partners with Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz at Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm, and he became a Burisma board member before Hunter was invited to join the board.
The Obama administration maintained there was no conflict of interest between Biden's work and his son in Ukraine when Hunter took the Burisma board position. While the negative optics surely open Biden up to criticism, there's no evidence any laws were broken. Around the time the photo was taken, Biden began traveling to Ukraine regularly to coordinate US aid to its new pro-Western government.
Read more: A timeline of Trump's campaign to pressure Ukraine's president into investigating Joe Biden
The photo has been widely circulated among conservative news outlets in recent days as evidence that Biden used the power of his office to halt a corruption case threatening his son's business fortunes. Here are a few key points adding context to the 2014 photo:
- No evidence has emerged that Biden tried helping his son in Ukraine.
- Bloomberg News reported earlier this year the corruption probe into Burisma had been dormant by the time Biden started traveling to Ukraine.
- Joined by other Western leaders, Biden pressed Ukraine for the firing of a prosecutor who failed to curb corruption in the country or risk losing $ 1 billion in loan guarantees. By helping to oust him, Biden actually made it more likely that Burisma would face harsher scrutiny.
- Ukraine's general prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko recently told the BBC he didn't "know any reason to investigate Joe Biden or Hunter Biden according to Ukrainian law."
- Lustsenko added that any possible wrongdoing by Burisma predated Hunter Biden's involvement with the company by several years. "The investigation didn't involve Hunter, and was not being actively pursued at the time in question," Axios wrote.
However, Trump and his conservative allies have continued spreading the conspiracy theory about Biden in an effort to weaken him ahead of next year's presidential election.
A July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is at the center of a whistleblower complaint from a member of the intelligence community, which alleges that the US president pressured Zelensky to look into the Bidens for political gain. House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry based on reports about the now-public complaint of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky.