Biden Backs Impeachment If Trump Ignores Document Requests
Biden’s remarks were his first extended comments about Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
(Bloomberg) -- Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday he would back impeaching President Donald Trump if the White House refuses to comply with congressional demands for information about his interactions with Ukraine’s president and other Democratic probes.
“Congress should demand the information it has a legal right to receive,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. If he doesn’t, Biden said, “Donald Trump will leave Congress no choice but to initiate impeachment. It would be a tragedy, but a tragedy of his own making.”
Biden’s remarks were his first extended comments about Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump pressured Zelenskiy to investigate the business activities in Ukraine of Biden’s son Hunter.
The phone call came to light as part of a whistle-blower complaint from an unidentified intelligence official. Congressional Democrats have demanded a copy of the complaint, but the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has refused.
But shortly before Biden spoke, Trump tweeted that he would release a complete transcript on Wednesday of his July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy. Trump said nothing about releasing a related whistle-blower complaint from an unidentified intelligence official, despite Democrats’ demands, but the whistle-blower then asked to testify before Congress, reigniting what Trump sought to defuse.
The Trump administration has also refused to comply with requests from the six congressional committees investigating various aspects of Trump’s business and political dealings.
The mood among Democrats in Congress has also shifted significantly this week with more lawmakers coming out in favor of beginning impeachment proceedings, and on Tuesday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats that she will support a formal impeachment inquiry of Trump, after growing demands for action from lawmakers.
Biden had long resisted calls for impeachment, but on Tuesday, he framed Trump’s actions as a threat to national security that required a bipartisan response.
“It’s an abuse of power,” Biden said. “It undermines our national security. It violates that oath of office. And it strikes at the heart of the sworn responsibility the president has to put the national interest before his personal interest.”
Biden’s comments come as many of his top rivals for the Democratic nomination have already called for impeachment and as Biden has seen his front-runner status start to weaken. Two recent state polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show Elizabeth Warren narrowly leading Biden.
One of Biden’s top rivals, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, didn’t explicitly defend the Biden family when asked at an Iowa news conference on Tuesday.
“I read what I read, but I don’t know enough to say at this point to make any definitive statement,” he said, when asked whether Hunter Biden should be off limits as a talking point for Democratic candidates on the campaign trail.
Trump’s allegation, unsupported by evidence, is that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general in 2016 in order to stop an investigation Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden served as a director.
Biden, as vice president, did demand that Ukraine oust its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, for corruption. And he later said he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine unless its leaders dismissed Shokin. The Ukrainian parliament wound up voting to remove the prosecutor.
But Shokin’s top deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, told Bloomberg News that the investigation into Burisma Holdings had been dormant for more than a year before Biden addressed corruption issues with Ukraine‘s president. The European Union and Ukraine’s creditors also sought Shokin’s dismissal.
--With assistance from Emma Kinery.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tyler Pager in Wilmington, Delaware at tpager1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.