Biden denies family profited from his name, says 'no basis' to Hunter Biden story

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Karl Rove: The economy 'matters a lot more' than the Hunter Biden 'scandal'

It's more 'effective' for President Trump to talk about 'how Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes' and 'slow down the economy' as opposed to the Hunter Biden 'scandal,' former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove says.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden denied that his son Hunter Biden profited because of his ties to the former vice president and said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., should be "ashamed of himself" for saying Hunter Biden used his last name "to make millions of dollars" in shady overseas deals.

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"This is the same garbage [from] Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman," Biden told local Wisconsin outlet WISN. "It's the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family. Even the man who served with him on that committee, the former nominee for the Republican Party, said there's no basis to this."

"The vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there's no basis at all," Biden continued. "Ron should be ashamed of himself."

In this screenshot from the DNCC’s livestream of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, addresses the virtual convention on August 20, 2020. (Photo by DNCC via Getty Images) (Photo by Handout/DNCC via Getty Images)

The Democratic presidential nominee was referring to comments Johnson made Monday during an interview on "Hannity."

“Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name," Johnson said. "That’s what’s happening here. What we revealed in our 87-page report is a vast web of connections with Chinese nationals, with people all over the world. Again, trading on the Biden name."

In a 2019 ABC News interview with Amy Robach, Hunter Biden was asked, "If your last name wasn't Biden ... do you think you would've been asked to be on the board of [Ukrainian company] Burisma?"

"I don't know. I don't know. Probably not, in retrospect," he said. "But that's -- you know -- I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden."

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Johnson chair, is investigating newly released emails that allegedly reveal that Hunter Biden introduced his father to a top executive at Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in 2015 at Hunter Biden's request. 

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Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said on Monday that in this week's debate the president will bring up allegations that Joe Biden met with a Ukrainian business associate of his son, as reported by the New York Post last week.

Ahead of the final debate, Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates told Fox News in a statement: 

"When Donald Trump obsesses over rightwing fringe conspiracy theories he merely reinforces what we've said the whole time: that he's forced to run away from his own record because his pandemic response continues to be a train wreck and he's the worst jobs president since the Great Depression," Bates said. "He invests in these tainted smears - which intelligence experts say bear all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation attacks - because he knows his presidency is a weak, pathetic failure. This is why he bailed on the second debate. And if he recycles the same strategy that lost him the first debate, then he will also lose the third.”

FOX Business' Angelica Stabile and Fox News' Brooke Singman, Paul Steinhauser and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.