Trump calls for Joe Biden to release details of 'all business dealings around the world' after he falsely accuses his brother James of 'building houses in Iraq'
Donald Trump on Wednesday night called for Joe Biden to release all details of his family's 'business dealings and influence peddling around the world', following a raucous rally in Iowa in which he painted a damning picture of the business dealings of both Biden's son Hunter, and Biden's brother James.
The president in Iowa accused Biden of being 'a corrupt politician who should not be allowed to run for the presidency', accusing him of running a 'massive pay for play scandal at the heart' of government.
He later tweeted: 'Joe Biden must immediately release all emails, meetings, phone calls, transcripts, and records related to his involvement in his family's business dealings and influence peddling around the world—including in CHINA!'
Donald Trump on Wednesday night spoke at length about the Biden family
Immediately after the rally Trump accused the Biden family of 'influence peddling'
Donald Trump addresses the crowd in Iowa on Wednesday night
With less than three weeks to go until the U.S. presidential election, the president was relishing the chance to attack Hunter Biden, 50, following a report in the New York Post on Wednesday morning.
The paper obtained Hunter Biden's emails, from a laptop repair shop in Delaware, which handed them to Rudy Giuliani - Trump's lawyer. Giuliani handed them to the Post.
In the emails, a Ukrainian oligarch writes to Hunter Biden seemingly seeking a meeting with Joe Biden, who was then the White House's point person on Ukraine.
Trump on Wednesday described the emails as 'a smoking gun'.
'We've just learnt that Joe Biden has been lying about his involvement in his son's business dealings,' said Trump.
Donald Trump is pictured arriving back to the White House on Wednesday night after the rally
The 77-year-old returning home after dancing and ad-libbing a lengthy speech in Des Moines
Tractors lined the hangar in the farming state of Iowa as Trump made his remarks
Trump arrives to greet the crowds in Des Moines on Wednesday
Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One, heading for Iowa, on Wednesday
Supporters of the president are pictured gathering at the airport in Des Moines
Trump said the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which hired the vice president's son in 2014, paid Hunter up to $183,000 a month.
He joked: 'He made it because of his great intellect. Hunter, congratulations on making a lot of money last year.'
Trump said that Biden was running 'a massive pay-to-play scandal at the heart of his presidency. There has never been an administration more corrupt than the Biden-Obama presidency.'
He said Biden was 'a corrupt politician who should not be allowed to run for the presidency.'
Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma in 2014
Trump also attacked Biden's younger brother James, 70 - described by ProPublica earlier this year as someone who 'has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive.'
James Biden, Trump said, was 'building houses in Iraq' - a sign, the president implied, of yet more grift.
James Biden's business dealings have long been a source of concern for Joe Biden, and in particular the Iraq deal has been seized upon by conservatives.
The New York Post and Fox News' Hannity show have both delved into the Iraq deal that Trump mentioned, which is reported by them as being a $1.5 billion deal to build at least 100,000 affordable homes in Iraq.
The deal was agreed in June 2011, seven months after James Biden began working for New Jersey-based Hill International.
Those involved in the deal said that James Biden - whose brother at that point was leading the administration's Iraq policy - had nothing to do with it, Politico reported in August 2019.
But the founder of HillStone's parent company has said the Biden name was an asset.
'Listen, his name helps him get in the door, but it doesn't help him get business,' Hill International's founder, Irvin Richter, told Fox Business Network of James.
'People who have important names tend to get in the door easier but it doesn't mean success.
'If he had the name Obama he would get in the door easier.'
In the end, the contracts did not work out, Politico said, and Hill International did not end up building the housing.
That has not stopped critics from seizing on the episode as yet more evidence of the Biden family's corruption.
Joe Biden with his businessman brother James (right) pictured in October 2008
Trump supporters lined the roads around Des Moines airport on Wednesday
A nonprofit farm policy advocacy group, Rural America 2020, took out a digital billboard across from the Des Moines airport warning that the Trump rally would be a 'COVID superspreader event'
Joe Biden himself insisted that he never met the Ukrainian oligarch who emailed Hunter Biden, and his aides have produced schedules for the then-vice president, showing that his time was strictly curtailed.
Hours after the story of Hunter's emails landed, the Biden camp condemned the report, and said a records search indicated no such meeting occurred.
Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said the paper 'never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story.'
He added: 'Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.'
The story was marked as disinformation by Facebook and Twitter, enraging Trump's supporters. Twitter's Jack Dorsey later apologized.
The president boasted that he had nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, promoting her 'great intellect'.
'I believe in intelligence,' he said. 'We made the right choice, with Amy.
'I don't mind running against Sleepy Joe, but Amy?'
Trump repeated his mantra that no administration has done more to help the United States.
He said he was fighting to 'save America from the radical left'.
'In exchange for his nomination he has handed control to the lunatics and Marxists.
'Let's face it, Joe is shot.
'President Xi is 100 per cent. Putin is 100 per cent. Kim Jong-un is 100 per cent. These people are sharp. But Joe has lost it. In his day, he wasn't the sharpest.'
Speaking in the state which produces more soy beans than any other in the nation, Trump discussed ethanol and the tariffs he had imposed.
He promised his audience that the economy was coming roaring back.
'We have saved all of our energy jobs, and whether you like it or not, I called Russia, and I called Saudi Arabia.
'And we are energy independent, and it is a beautiful thing.'
Fans of the president await his arrival in Iowa
Temperature checks were made on all those attending
The large-scale rallies have been described as worrying by Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert.
Fauci appeared on CNN on Monday and was asked by Jake Tapper, the CNN host, what he thought about the president's return to the campaign trail that evening.
Trump on Monday night was in Sanford, Florida, for an event which attracted several thousand, mainly maskless, supporters.
Fauci said he thought it was 'asking for trouble'.
'Put aside all of the issues of what political implications a rally has, and just put that aside and look at it purely in the context of public health,' he said.
'We know that that is asking for trouble when you do that. We've seen that when you have situations of congregate settings, where there are a lot of people without masks, the data speak for themselves. It happens.
'And now is even more so a worse time to do that because when you look at what's going on in the United States, it's really very troublesome.'
Asked in a second interview on Monday night, on CNBC, what he thought the outlook for the nation was, unless face mask mandates were universal, he replied: 'I think we're facing a whole lot of trouble.'
He added: 'We have a baseline of infections that vary between 40,000 and 50,000 a day.
'That's a bad place to be, when you are going into the colder weather of the fall.'
He said he was worried about midwest states such as Iowa that were seeing spikes in cases.
'So you combine an increase in test positivity, which is always a predictor of more cases, and ultimately more hospitalizations, and ultimately more deaths, and you combine that with a baseline of 40, 45, 50,000 new cases a day, as you go into a weather system where you're going to be spending more time indoors rather than outdoors which is a perfect setup for an acceleration of respiratory-borne diseases: that is unquestionably a problem.
'We are in a bad place now, and we have got to turn this around.'
And as Trump races against the clock, Americans are casting ballots early at a record pace.
Close to 12 million people have already voted, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Long lines in Texas and Georgia snaked out of polling places and down sidewalks on Tuesday as people rushed to vote. Early voting starts in three more states on Wednesday - Kansas, Rhode Island and Tennessee.
Biden has no public campaign events scheduled after stumping in Florida on Tuesday.
Trump returned to the campaign trail on Monday night in Florida for the first time since disclosing he had the coronavirus.
A young Trump supporter waits for the president in Des Moines, Iowa
The airfield was a sea of Trump hats and American flags as they awaited the president
The rally came hours after the White House said Trump had tested negative for COVID-19 on consecutive days and was not infectious to others.
That Trump is traveling to Iowa so close to Election Day is a worrisome sign for his re-election hopes.
He beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there by almost 10 percentage points in 2016, but recent polls have shown the state to be competitive.
Trump looks to be spending much of the week trying to galvanize his white, conservative base rather than trying to appeal directly to undecided voters, many of whom live in the nation's suburbs.
On Thursday, he heads to Greenville in rural North Carolina, a closely fought state where early voting will begin that day, then on to rural Georgia and central Florida the day after.
Reuters/Ipsos polling released this week showed Biden widening his lead in the key states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – states Trump won in 2016.
Iowa is also seeing a major spike in COVID-19 cases, with hospitalizations at an all-time high in the state.
Republican Governor Kim Reynolds has resisted implementing statewide containment measures such as a mandate to wear masks. This week, she urged Trump supporters on social media to come out en masse to see the president.
The president is pictured arriving in Des Moines, Iowa on Wednesday night
Air Force One pulled up to the hangar, allowing Trump to stage his entrance
But Trump's illness has put the focus of the campaign's closing stretch squarely on his response to the coronavirus, with Biden repeatedly criticizing Trump's handling of the pandemic, which has infected more than 7.8 million people in the United States, killed more than 214,000 and put millions out of work.
On Tuesday in Florida, Biden told a group of seniors at a community center that Trump had recklessly dismissed the threat that the virus had posed to their at-risk population.
'To Donald Trump, you're expendable. You're forgettable,' Biden said.
Trump has touted his handling of the crisis.
The Trump campaign said it would conduct temperature checks and hand out masks at his rallies, but not require attendees to wear them.
At his airport rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, some of Trump's supporters in the front rows wore red-and-blue masks sporting the president's 'MAGA' slogan, but many other attendees wore no masks at all.
A nonprofit farm policy advocacy group, Rural America 2020, took out a digital billboard across from the Des Moines airport warning that the Trump rally would be a 'COVID superspreader event.'
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