US President, Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden had some of their sharpest blows over corruption and purported foreign ties at Thursday’s final debate in Nashville, as both candidates sought to link one another financially to questionable transactions in countries like Russia, China and Ukraine.
Trump accused Biden and his family of profiting from foreign countries, relying on unsubstantiated and discredited allegations that the former vice president again denied. The president has criticized Biden over his son Hunter’s past work at a Ukrainian gas company while his father was working on U.S.-Ukraine policy as vice president. Trump and his GOP allies have floated potential conflicts of interest, but there’s no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.
“Joe got $3.5 million dollars from Russia that came through [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin because he was friendly with the mayor of Moscow. I never got any money from Russia,” the president said in a line of attack that Biden appeared more willing to dismiss than engage with.
Biden, who in the first debate approached and then backed away from the subject of Trump’s family’s ethics, didn’t engage on the subject during Thursday’s contest.
Trump, meanwhile, cited a portion of an investigation from Senate Republicans that deemed Hunter Biden’s work at Burisma “problematic” but acknowledged that it couldn’t specify how much of an effect his work had on U.S. policy towards Ukraine.
Biden denied those assertions, saying that he hasn’t “taken a penny from any foreign source in my life.” The former vice president then pivoted to a recent investigation by The New York Times about Trump’s undisclosed bank account in China.
“We learned this president does business in China, has a secret bank account in China, and is talking about me taking money? I have not taken a penny from a single country whatsoever,” Biden said, noting that he has publicized decades of his financial information and again calling on the president to release his tax returns.
Trump, who has refused to adhere to the traditional presidential practice of voluntarily publicizing tax returns, repeated the claim that he can’t release them while under audit, which has been debunked by the IRS.
“Release your tax returns, or stop talking about corruption,” Biden said.
