What was in the video?
The original video used a popular parody of the Nickelback song "photograph" to target Biden. In it, while the song urges "look at this photograph" it showed a photo of former Joe and Hunter Biden at a golf course, along with a man named Devon Archer who was labelled as a "Ukraine gas exec."The video also includes a video of Joe Biden insisting that he had never talked with Hunter about Hunter's role on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas firm called Burisma holdings. This claim by Biden has already been undermined by his own son, Hunter Biden, who said in a New Yorker interview in July that he had discussed Burisma with his father "just once."
Image source: YouTube screen capture
Trump tweeted the video on Wednesday afternoon, along with the all-caps caption "LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH!"
But by early Thursday morning, the video had been pulled. In its place, the tweet now shows a gray box with the words "This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner."
Who was in the photo?
Devon Archer isn't a Ukraine gas executive. He did sit on the board of Burisma Holdings, along with Hunter Biden, but his connection to the Bidens predates that by years.
Before Archer knew Biden, he was friends with the Heinz-Kerry clan. According to an article from last year by Peter Schweizer, in 2009 Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and Chris Heinz (the son of Teresa Heinz-Kerry) started an investment fund called Rosemont Capital. This collaboration predates Hunter joining the board of Burisma in 2014. Archer had joined the board of Burisma shortly before Biden.
The photo itself, according to Fox News, which first obtained it, was taken in August 2014, not long after both Biden and Archer had joined the board of Burisma. The New Yorker reported in July that Archer had convinced Hunter Biden to join the board. Archer himself was convinced to join Burisma by the firm's co-founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, who said that he was looking for international members for the company's board and that he wanted to westernize how the company approached transparency.
Trump, and others, have tried to use this photo to prove that Joe Biden lied about not talking with Hunter about Burisma while he was in office. However, since Hunter Biden and Archer were associated with each other for years before this photo was taken, it hardly presents a smoking gun.
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