Joe Biden said Wednesday that President Trump “abused his power to come after my family” when he repeatedly asked the Ukrainian president to investigate the former vice president and his son Hunter.
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate issued a statement in response to the release of a summary of Trump’s 30-minute phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, saying it “makes clear that days after the President ordered the delay of Congressionally-appropriated military assistance to Ukraine, he implored the President of Ukraine to work with his personal attorney to manufacture a smear against a domestic political opponent, using a malicious conspiracy theory that has been universally debunked by every independent outlet that has looked at it.”
Biden continued, “We also learned that he planned to involve the United States Department of Justice in this scheme — a direct attack on the core independence of that department, an independence essential to the rule of law.”
He said Congress is “entitled” to a full version of the whistleblower complaint at the center of the Ukraine scandal, accusing Trump of putting “his own political interests over our national security interest, which is bolstering Ukraine against Russian pressure.”
“Congress must pursue the facts and quickly take prompt action to hold Donald Trump accountable,” Biden said. “In the meantime, I will continue to focus my campaign not on how Donald Trump abused his power to come after my family, but on how he has turned his back on America’s families.”