Joe Biden should be careful if he wins in 2020, says Iowa GOP Senator Joni Ernst: 'We’re going to impeach him'
Iowa’s Republican Senator Joni Ernst on Sunday, February 2, warned that her party could immediately push for the impeachment of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden over his work in Ukraine while serving as the vice president in the Barack Obama years, given he wins the White House in the November elections.
Biden and his son Hunter have been accused of indulging in corrupt activities in Ukraine by none other than President Donald Trump. The latter, however, found the accusation boomeranging as the Democrat-controlled House impeached him last December on charges of pressuring the Ukrainian leadership to investigate Biden, a domestic opponent.
“I think this door of impeachable whatever has been opened,” Ernst said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Joe Biden should be very careful what he’s asking for because, you know, we can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, right the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him.’”
Ernst, 49, said the grounds for impeachment would be “for being assigned to take on Ukrainian corruption yet turning a blind eye to Burisma because his son was on the board making over a million dollars a year”.
Former president Barack Obama has sent Biden, also a former senator from Delaware, to fight corruption, including leading the effort to remove prosecutor general Viktor Shokin from office. Shokin was toppled in 2016 and he later claimed that he was fired because he was probing Burisma, where Hunter once worked and Biden wanted to protect his son. The claim was debunked.
Ernst's words reiterated Trump's plan, said Biden
Biden, 77, responded to Ernst’s charges in Iowa saying her words only proved what he has been saying: Trump’s interest in Ukraine was aimed at hurting his presidential candidacy.
“Doesn’t that make the case I’m making that from the very beginning that this was all about not wanting to run against me?” one of the Democratic frontrunners asked. Last week, Ernst linked Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate to Biden’s chances in the Iowa caucuses scheduled Monday, February 3, saying the trial could hurt Biden’s prospects. “I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus goers. Will they be supporting vice president Biden at this point? Not certain at that,” she said.
Biden responded to Ernst’s remarks by asking the Iowa voters to back him in the caucuses and ruin the night for both her and Trump.
Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield responded to Ernst’s remarks, saying: “Iowans have the chance tomorrow to say the words that Donald Trump and Joni Ernst fear most: I’m here to caucus for Joe Biden.”