September 24, 2019

Joe Biden Says Congress Should Impeach Trump If He Doesn’t Hand Over Whistleblower’s Report

“If he continues to obstruct Congress and flout the law, Donald Trump will leave Congress, in my view, no choice but to initiate impeachment.”

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Former Vice President and current presidential candidate Joe Biden, who has been a central figure in the Ukraine scandal rocking Donald Trump’s presidency, said in a speech Tuesday that if Trump fails to release a copy of a formal complaint made by a whistleblower, Congress will have “no choice” but to impeach.

“If he continues to obstruct Congress and flout the law, Donald Trump will leave Congress, in my view, no choice but to initiate impeachment,” Biden said. “That will be a tragedy, but a tragedy of his own making.”

As my colleague Inae Oh reported, “Trump on Monday appeared to confirm that he pressured Ukraine to investigate debunked corruption allegations against Joe Biden in exchange for releasing US military aid to the country.”

As Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden called for the top Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to step down due to his failure to quell corruption in the country, as NPR reports. While Biden was working with Ukraine, his son, Hunter Biden, took a position on the board of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest natural gas company. Trump has accused Biden of having a conflict of interest, but these claims have been disproven.

This week, Trump admitted to having discussed Biden, a potential challenger for the presidency in the 2020 election, during a phone call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

“I can take the political attacks,” Biden said in his Tuesday speech. “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 US constitution, that will last forever.”

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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