Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris will return to the campaign trail Monday following five days of lockdown after one of her senior staffers tested positive for COVID-19, Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign announced Saturday.
Harris first announced Thursday she was halting all travel and campaigning after two Biden campaign staffers, a member of the flight crew and Liz Allen, Harris’ communications director, contracted coronavirus. Harris will travel to Florida for events in Orlando and Jacksonville as her debut back on the trail.
On Monday, @KamalaHarris will return to the #Election2020 campaign trail with a trip to #Florida, announces @JoeBiden campaign. pic.twitter.com/CiApV519Te
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) October 17, 2020
Harris’ return to campaigning comes amid days of controversy surrounding articles from the New York Post alleging Biden both knew of and participated in his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China, something the Democratic presidential nominee had previously denied. (RELATED: Biden Says He Never Discussed Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Deal. Hunter Says He Did)
The allegations arise from copies of emails obtained from a laptop Hunter Biden allegedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop earlier this year. If authentic, the emails would suggest Biden both met with an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, for which his son was a board member, and stood to gain monetarily from his son’s dealings with a Chinese firm.
Fox News reports that one of the people on the reported email thread related to the China deal has verified the authenticity of the messages, though Fox does not identify the source. While the Biden campaign had denied any wrongdoing, it has not explicitly ruled out the possibility Biden had some form of interaction with the Ukrainian executive.
“Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters. “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”