Biden Says He Doesn’t Want to Testify in Senate Impeachment Trial

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
January 23, 2020Politics
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Biden Says He Doesn’t Want to Testify in Senate Impeachment Trial
Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during an event on Jan. 21, 2020 in Ames, Iowa. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

Former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential contender, said he doesn’t want to be part of any deals made between Democrat and Republican lawmakers that would see each side get one or more witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial.

“The reason why I would not make the deal, and the bottom line is, this is a constitutional issue and we’re not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater,” Biden said while campaigning on Jan. 23 in Osage, Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register.

“They’re trying to turn it into political theater but I want no part of being any part of that,” he added.

Democrats have publicly rejected hypothetical deals that would see Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or another witness Republicans want to hear from in exchange for hearing from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney or former national security adviser John Bolton. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are among the GOP members who have said they’d deal in witnesses, one way or another.

Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who worked for Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019, were accused of corruption by Republican President Donald Trump during a July 2019 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president.

Trump noted that Joe Biden said in 2018 that while still in office in 2016, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid from Ukraine unless a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was ousted. Shokin at the time was investigating Burisma.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution,” Trump told Zelensky. “And a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”

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President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hold a meeting in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 25, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
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Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin holds a press conference in Kiev on Nov. 2, 2015. (Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)
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Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 4, 2019. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
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Hunter Biden waits for the start of his father’s, Vice President Joe Biden’s, debate at Centre College in Danville, Ky., on Oct. 11, 2012. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo)

“I understand and I’m knowledgeable about the situation,” Zelensky said. The country’s new top prosecutor would look into the situation, he added, which Ukraine announced later in the year. The probe was expanded a few months after that.

Both Bidens have denied wrongdoing, though Hunter Biden said it was “poor judgment” to be being on the board of Burisma while his father was in office and dealing with the country.

Biden on Wednesday defended his son, claiming that no one has suggested Hunter Biden did anything wrong.

“Nobody has indicated that there was a single, solitary thing that he did that was inappropriate … other than the appearance. It looked bad because he was there,” Biden said, the Register reported. “He did not sign up for a second term on that board but he acknowledges, he acknowledges that he in fact made a mistake going on the board.”

Stephen Delgado, a 70-year-old retiree from Arizona who drove to Iowa to see Biden and was the one who asked the former vice president about testifying, told The Washington Post later that he thinks Biden should testify.

“He should call the bluff. Trump is a bully and he needs to stand up to him. Democrats have to stop all this ‘When they go low, we go high.’ This is a street fight,” Delgado said.

“It would clear the air. The people would get to see what a good, decent man he is.”

From The Epoch Times