Twitter has removed a video that President Donald Trump posted, which featured former Vice President Joe Biden and his son in a music video clip, after a claim from the song’s copyright holder.
The video, which is accompanied by the caption “Look at this photograph,” appears to be the president’s attempt to defend his interactions with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which is at the center of an impeachment inquiry.
A recently released transcript of a July 25 call with Zelensky revealed that Trump had requested Ukraine to look into CrowdStrike, a technology firm that was hired by the Democratic National Committee after an alleged hack. In the same call, Trump also asked Zelensky to look into Biden’s alleged misconduct in his dealings with Ukraine. In 2018, Biden admitted that he pressured the Ukrainian government to remove a prosecutor in charge of the probe into private Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Biden’s son, Hunter, was a board member.
The contents of the call prompted an anonymous whistleblower, who cited secondhand information, to make a complaint against the president, alleging that Trump had acted improperly in the call. The House launched their inquiry accusing the president of violating the constitution and abusing his power.
The video, which is still circulating on other social media platforms, begins with Biden denying that he had spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings. It then cuts to a popular clip of Nickelback’s 2005 single “Photograph,” which features vocalist Chad Kroeger holding a picture to the camera, singing, “look at this photograph.” In Trump’s edit, the photo shows the Bidens with Devon Archer, who was a board member of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, golfing together in 2014.
The tech company removed the video within 12 hours of it being posted on Oct. 2, according to The Guardian. Trump’s post is still available on his Twitter feed. The section that held the video now says, “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH! pic.twitter.com/QQYTqG4KTt
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2019
Twitter’s removal of the video did not stop Donald Trump Jr. from resharing the video on his own account.
“Not sure why Twitter wouldn’t want you to ‘Look at this Photograph,'” Trump Jr. wrote.
Not sure why Twitter wouldn’t want you to “Look at this Photograph” pic.twitter.com/fmXkdc5gTo
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 3, 2019
Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have repeatedly raised concerns about Biden’s alleged dealings with Ukraine. During the 2018 Council of Foreign Relations Discussion meeting, Biden bragged about successfully forcing then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2016 to terminate their top prosecutor Viktor Shokin by withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid to the country.
Shokin was in charge of investigating the Burisma Holdings at the time, while Hunter Biden, served on the board of directors. The Hill reported in April that U.S. banking records indicated Hunter’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, typically amounting to more than $166,000 a month. The period in question is when then-Vice President Joe Biden was the U.S. official dealing with Ukraine.
Biden has denied that he used his influence to get the top prosecutor fired and also said he and his son have done nothing wrong.
Meanwhile, Shokin told a European court in a sworn affidavit that he was removed because he refused to drop the Biden investigation.
“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine, and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors,” Shokin wrote.
Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.
