Biden: ‘I would obey any subpoena’
Presidential candidate reverses course while on Iowa tour
WASHINGTON, Iowa – The shadow of impeachment clouded Joe Biden’s trip through eastern Iowa on Saturday after the former vice president confirmed he would defy a congressional subpoena if he didn’t believe there was a legal rationale behind it.
Biden had told the Des Moines Register’s editorial board Friday he would not comply with a Senate subpoena during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.
It confirmed a statement Biden made in an interview with NPR earlier in the month.
He began the day Saturday clarifying those remarks on Twitter before making appearances in several Iowa towns.
“I have always complied with a lawful order and in my eight years as VP, my office – unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence – cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests,” Biden tweeted. “But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial.”
By Saturday night at a town hall in Fairfield, Iowa, Biden seemed to reverse by telling a crowd he will comply with a subpoena.
“The point I was making, as it relates to me, is the only rational reason ... that I could possibly be called in an impeachment trial was, ‘Can I shed any light on whether or not he committed the crimes he’s accused of ?’ ” Biden said. “And there’s no reason to believe I would have any notion of whether he committed that crime.”
In Tipton, Iowa, on Saturday morning, Biden said the next president must unify the country following the “strain” of impeachment.
“There’s nothing to celebrate,” he said of Trump’s impeachment. “But the Constitution requires Congress to act.”
Biden said he believes the president “basically indicted himself by acknowledging that he’s asked for help from foreign countries as well as engaging in doing everything he could to prevent Congress from doing its job.”
At his Washington event, Biden was asked who he would name as a running mate “so that people know who they probably will end up having to step in if you do get the nomination and are impeached.”
Biden pushed back against the premise.
“You make it sound like this is just a game that’s being played – impeaching President Trump,” he said. “... The House did not impeach President Trump because he uses raw language and he denigrates people. (It impeached) him because he’s doing two things that no president has allegedly ever done.”
Biden said the House impeached Trump because he solicited a foreign country to interfere in a U.S. election and then obstructed Congress from investigating the allegations.
Trump was impeached, in part, for asking the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a gas company in that country. Some Republicans have floated the possibility of calling Biden as a witness in the Senate trial.
The House has delayed the transmitting articles of impeachment to the Senate.
If the Senate does begin an impeachment trial in January, Biden could have an advantage over the five Democratic senators who would have to split their time between campaigning in Iowa and sitting in the jury at the U.S. Capitol.
“We’ll see whether or not any of that can get through or whether there will really be a trial – whether the jurors will actually have an open mind and determine whether or not any of those things happened,” Biden said in Washington.
Teri Stone, an Iowa City resident who saw Biden speak in Washington, said she appreciates the way Biden has responded to attacks from Trump and Republicans in Congress.
“There’s so much ugliness out there, especially what he’s been under. It’s ridiculous,” she said.