Biden: House should investigate Trump’s Ukraine phone call
DES MOINES, Iowa — Allegations that President Donald Trump courted foreign interference from Ukraine to hurt his leading Democratic rival, Joe Biden, dominated presidential politics Saturday, as Biden demanded a House investigation of Trump’s phone call in July with Ukraine’s leader and as Trump lashed out, denying wrongdoing without releasing a transcript of the call.
With Trump seizing on a familiar defense, saying Democrats were undertaking a “witch hunt” against him on Ukraine, Biden called on the House of Representatives to begin a new investigation of whether the president sought the interference of a foreign government to bolster his reelection campaign.
“This appears to be an overwhelming abuse of power,” Biden said during a campaign swing in Iowa. “We have never seen anything like this from any president.”
Trump is said to have urged the Ukranian president on a July 25 phone call to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who did business in Ukraine while his father was vice president. Trump’s request is part of a secret whistleblower complaint in the intelligence community that is said to involve Trump making an unspecified commitment to a foreign leader, according to two people familiar with the complaint.
The sharp accusations between Trump and Biden elevated the president’s dealings with Ukraine as a potentially significant new issue in the presidential race.
The controversy has focused on whether Trump manipulated foreign policy — a military aid package to Ukraine had been delayed at the time of the phone call — to pressure the country’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to take action to damage Biden’s election bid.
On Saturday, Trump sought to deflect attention from that question by accusing Biden of acting improperly as vice president in calling for the ouster of a Ukranian prosecutor who had overseen an inquiry into corruption related to the oligarch whose company employed Hunter Biden.
Trump defended his own conduct as “perfectly fine” and routine.
No evidence has surfaced to support Trump’s claim that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal. But some State Department officials had expressed concern that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine could complicate his father’s diplomacy there.
The issue strikes a particular nerve for Biden, who has long feared putting his family under the harsh spotlight of a presidential campaign. During a twominute encounter with reporters on Saturday morning, he grew irate, angrily insisting that he had never spoken with his son about any overseas work.
“You should be looking at Trump,” Biden said. “Trump is doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum.”