Misleading: Hunter Biden has links to ‘prostitution or human trafficking ring’.

The committees report don’t have evidence that directly confirms the claim that Hunter Biden has links to prostitution or human trafficking. On September 23, 2020, the Republican chairmen of two U.S. Senate committees published a joint report about the business activities of Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. A “key finding” from the report is the allegation that: “Hunter Biden paid non-resident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an ‘Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.’” “There is extensive public reporting concerning Hunter Biden’s alleged involvement with prostitution services. Records on file with the Committees do not directly confirm or refute these individual reports. However, they do confirm that Hunter Biden sent thousands of dollars to individuals who have either: 1) been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking; 2) an association with the adult entertainment industry; or 3) potential association with prostitution. Some recipients of those funds are Ukrainian and Russian citizens” states the report. Snopes reports that one of the key things to note from the above statement is that the “extensive public reporting” refers to a single article published by the New York Post in March 2017. This article was on a leaked court filing from Hunter Biden’s divorce from his wife, Kathleen, who accused him of “spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations) …” Speaking to The New Yorker in the summer of 2019, Hunter Biden denied hiring prostitutes. Moreover, the statement explicitly notes that the committees don’t have evidence that directly confirms the claim that Hunter Biden hired prostitutes. Instead, it states that “records on file” with the two committees point to patterns of transactions and payments involving Biden, which suggests a link to prostitution or human trafficking. Therefore, the claim that ‘Hunter Biden has links to prostitution or human trafficking ring’ is merely based on an assumption, and at the time of writing, there is no publicly available evidence that connects Biden to prostitution. Therefore the claim that Biden has links to prostitution or human trafficking ring is misleading because the report explicitly says that they have no evidence which confirms the claim and merely one of several explanations for the transactions.