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.”

Keiko/Hiromi

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate