Joe Biden gets behind calls to impeach Donald Trump

Joe Biden said on Thursday for the first time that Donald Trump should be impeached.

‘Shooting holes in the constitution’: Joe Biden in Rochester, New Hampshire, on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Former US vice-president Joe Biden said on Thursday for the first time that Donald Trump should be impeached, telling supporters in New Hampshire that the President had “violated his oath of office”.

Mr Biden, who had previously stopped short of calling for outright impeachment, offered a forceful rationale in urging congress to impeach his presidential rival. He said Mr Trump had obstructed justice by refusing to comply with congressional inquiries and committed impeachable acts in plain sight.

“In full view of the world and the American people, Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts,” said Mr Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination.

“To preserve our constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached. No president in American history has ever dared to engage in such unimaginable behaviour,” Mr Biden said during an appearance in the state where the nation’s first presidential primary is to take place.

He accused the President of “shooting holes in the constitution, and we cannot let him get away with it”.

Mr Trump, in a tweet, called Mr Biden’s comments pathetic and said: “I did nothing wrong.”

Later, in comments to reporters, he attributed Mr Biden’s decision to come out in favour of impeachment to his standing in national polls, where he is now neck and neck with a surging Elizabeth Warren. Mr Biden is “dropping like a rock”, Mr Trump said.

Before Thursday’s address, Mr Biden had faced calls within his party to offer a more confrontational approach to Mr Trump as House of Representatives Democrats seek to build momentum towards impeachment. Of the 235 Democrats in the 433-member house, fewer than 10 haven’t come out in support of the impeachment inquiry.

While primary rivals such as Senator Warren and Bernie Sanders have repeatedly called for Mr Trump’s impeachment, Mr Biden had previously said congress should take the step if the President stonewalled the investigation. But Mr Biden’s stance changed after the White House said it wouldn’t co-operate with the house impeachment probe.

That resonated with David Chanler, a retired newspaper ­circulation manager who travelled from his home in Ipswich, Massachusetts, to listen to Mr Biden. Mr Chanler said he was considering voting for either Mr Biden or Senator Warren, his home-state senator.

“When I had seen him on TV maybe a week or so ago, I felt like he really wasn’t being strong enough in reaction to what Trump is doing with Ukraine. But today, he was,” Mr Chanler said.

Mr Biden also pressed Mr Trump again to release his tax returns, noting that president Richard Nixon had released his tax records. “What’s buried in those returns?” Mr Biden asked.

Mr Trump has sought to undermine calls by Democrats to impeach him over his effort to have Ukraine investigate Mr Biden, referring to it as a “witch hunt”.

The house inquiry came after Mr Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July phone call to work with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney-General William Barr on investigations involving Mr Biden and his son Hunter.

The phone call and events leading up to it have been the subject of a whistleblower complaint by a CIA officer.

Mr Biden again defended his work as vice-president to root out corruption in Ukraine by replacing Viktor Shokin, whom Mr Biden called a “weak prosecutor”, saying it was the official position of the Obama administration. He said Mr Trump had held “hostage political support and hundreds of millions of desperately needed dollars to a country at war to advance his own political demands. If it had been written as a sitcom, it wouldn’t have been believed.”

The impeachment drama has coincided with Senator Warren’s rise in primary polls, threatening Mr Biden’s role as the leading contender. She recently took a narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics average of public polling, a closely watched indicator.

Mr Biden said “we’re not electing a planner”, a not-so-subtle dig at Senator Warren, who has made her policy plans central to her candidacy. “I’ve been there. I know what it takes to get it done.”

The Wall Street Journal