Politics|Joe Biden Says He Backs Impeachment if Trump Defies Congress
Mr. Biden argued in a speech that if the president did not turn over a whistle-blower complaint, he would “leave Congress, in my view, no choice but to initiate impeachment.”
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Updated 5 PM ET
As House Democrats shed months of hesitation on Tuesday andcoalesced around impeachment proceedings, former Vice President President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said he would support them if President Trump did not comply with congressional requests for information related to Ukraine and other investigations.
In a brief speech in Wilmington, Del. Biden – who had, until now, skirted the impeachment question in response to reports that Mr. Trump had urged the president of Ukraine to investigate him and his son Hunter on unsubstantiated allegations of corruption – called on Congress to demand a copy of a complaint made by a federal whistle-blower. The Trump administration has been withholding it despite a law that generally requires such complaints to be shared.
“Denying Congress information to which it is constitutionally entitled and obstructing itsefforts to investigate actions is not the conduct of an American president, ”he said. “It is an abuse of power. It undermines our national security, it violates his oath of office, and it strikes at the heart of the responsibility a president has to put national interests ahead of personal interests. ”
If he does not comply, Mr. Biden said, “Donald Trump leaves Congress, in my view, no choice but to initiate impeachment. That would be a tragedy, but a tragedy of his own making. ”
The speech brought Mr. Biden more or less in line with other top Democrats running for president, though the conditions he placed on impeachment – “if the president does not comply” – set him apart from some candidates.
SenatorsElizabeth Warrenof Massachusetts andKamala Harrisof California had already called for impeachment, and Ms. Warren had been particularly forceful, accusing Congress of shirking its constitutional responsibilities by declining, until now, to open impeachment proceedings.
“After the Mueller report, Congress had a duty to begin impeachment, ”Ms. Warrentweeted on Friday. “By failing to act, Congress is complicit in Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in US elections. Do your constitutional duty and impeach the president. ”
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During a news conference in Davenport, Iowa, on Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont also called on the Judiciary Committee to begin proceedings.
“What the Congress must do is keep its eyes focused on the needs of the working people of this country as it goes forward with the impeachment inquiry and the likely impeachment of Donald Trump, ”he said. “Enough is enough, and today I hope very much that the Judiciary Committee will go forward with an impeachment inquiry.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially announced the inquiry around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, capping an extraordinary turnaround from her months of resistance.
The recent reports that Mr. Trump had pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Hunter Biden’s financial dealings with a Ukrainian natural gas company were a breaking point, leading many previously reluctant Democrats, including Ms. Pelosi,to support the inquiry.
Mr. Trump spoke to the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, by phone in July shortly after he froze military aid to the country, which is battling Russian-controlled separatists.
He acknowledgedon Sunday that he had discussed Mr. Biden during that call, amid an uproar over the possibility that he had used American dollars as leverage to get a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent.
At the United Nations on Tuesday morning,Mr. Trump said he had held up the aidbecause other European countries had not paid enough to support Ukraine. He released the money under pressure from Congress after the delay was publicly reported.
On Tuesday afternoon,Mr. Trump saidhe would release a transcript of his call with Mr. Zelensky. But his administration is still refusing to provide Congress with the full complaint that a whistle-blower filed about the president’s dealings with a foreign government.
Mr. Biden’s campaign has said his son did nothing wrong in Ukraine and has accused the president of abusing his power to extract a “political favor.”
“I can take the political attacks , ”Mr. Biden said in his speech on Tuesday. “They’ll come and they’ll go and in time they’ll soon be forgotten, but if we allow a president to get away with shredding the United States Constitution, that will last forever.”
“This isn’t a Democratic issue, a Republican issue,” he said, though of course, in Congress, it is. “It is a national issue and it is a security issue.”
Katie Glueck and Sydney Ember contributed reporting.
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Maggie Astor is a political reporter based in New York. Previously, she was a general assignment reporter and a copy editor for The Times and a reporter for The Record in New Jersey.@MaggieAstor
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