Biden campaign rips NY Times for running Schweizer op-ed on Ukraine: ‘Are you truly blind?’

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign ripped The New York Times for “giving top billing” to Peter Schweizer after the newspaper published an op-ed from the “Clinton Cash” author that contends that the former vice president was “self-dealing” in Ukraine during President Obama’s second term.

CNN reported the objection came in a letter Wednesday night to the Times executive editor, Dean Baquet, from Biden deputy campaignmanager Kate Bedingfield, who called the decision to run the column an “active participation” in a “smear campaign” against the former vice president.

{mosads}”This leaves us with a critical question: are you truly blind to what you got wrong in 2016, or are you deliberately continuing policies that distort reality for the sake of controversy and the clicks that accompany it?” Bedingfield asks Baquet.

Schweizer wrote in the op-ed, titled, “What Hunter Biden Did Was Legal – And That’s the Problem,” that “Congress can and should conduct an inquiry to determine whether anything illegal occurred.” 

“As vice president, Joe Biden served as point person on American policy toward China and Ukraine. In both instances, his son Hunter, a businessman, landed deals he was apparently unqualified to score save for one thing: his father,” Schweizer also wrote.

My piece in the @NYTimesOpEd today on the Bidens: “Congress can and should conduct an inquiry to determine whether anything illegal occurred.” https://t.co/ZTnEoRJCzT

— Peter Schweizer (@peterschweizer) October 9, 2019

The Times defended its decision to run the op-ed in a statement obtained by CNN.

“Our coverage of the Biden campaign and Hunter Biden has been fair and accurate,” the paper said.

“[The New York Times] will continue to cover Joe Biden with the same tough and fair standards we apply to every candidate in the race and we’re happy to sit down with Biden advisers anytime to discuss news coverage,” it added.

President Trump’s attempts to encourage Ukraine to investigate Biden, a top 2020 Democratic White House hopeful, and his son, Hunter, over alleged wrongdoing sparked an impeachment inquiry.

Two weeks ago, the Biden camp also demanded that ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC and MSNBC stop booking Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. “We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative.”