Biden Says Trump Impeachment ‘Not Partisan,’ Unlike Clinton Case

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden sought to distinguish comments he made assailing partisanship during the 1999 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton with his support for removing President Donald Trump, whose Senate trial nears its end Friday.

“It’s not a partisan impeachment,” Biden said on ABC’s Good Morning America program Friday. “He violated the Constitution, period.”

Biden said his comments in 1999 against party-line votes to remove a president were different because the Clinton case didn’t involve a constitutional violation.

“A party-line vote on something that doesn’t relate to a constitutional violation is a different thing,” Biden said.

Biden said a vote against impeaching Trump reflects poorly on “those who know, in fact, in their heart and head that, in fact, it’s a violation of the Constitution to do what he did.”

This post is part of Campaign Update, our live coverage from the 2020 campaign trail.

To contact the reporter on this story: Caitlin Webber in Washington at cwebber4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kasia Klimasinska at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Kathleen Hunter

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