It looks like Uncle Joe has finally succumbed to the pressure. After telling the Des Moines Register that he would not comply with a subpoena to testify in the Senate’s upcoming impeachment trial, 2020 hopeful and former Vice President Joe Biden has changed course, according to the Washington Examiner.
In a series of tweets on Saturday, Biden insisted that he has “always complied with a lawful order” and “cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests” before saying that the subpoenas shouldn’t be going to him; rather, he said, they should be going to the White House.
“I want to clarify something”
Biden’s remarks came after the former vice president faced backlash for confirming to the Register that he would not comply with subpoenas that could come from the Senate compelling him to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, a statement the Democrat first made earlier this month.
Biden told the Register that testifying would take away from the real heart of the matter: wrongdoing by Trump.
“What are you going to cover?” Biden said of the media. “You guys are going to cover for three weeks anything that I said. And [Trump’s] going to get away.”
But in three brief tweets over the weekend, Biden backtracked.
“I want to clarify something I said yesterday. In my 40 years in public life, 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 Saturday. He went on:
The subpoenas should go to witnesses with testimony to offer to Trump’s shaking down the Ukraine government — they should go to the White House.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 28, 2019
Joe Biden and the White House
But as much as Biden would like to insist that he has nothing to do with the current happenings in Washington, Trump’s impeachment does very much have to do with “Joe 30330.”
The former vice president’s son, Hunter, was allegedly involved with a corrupt Ukrainian energy firm known as Burisma Holdings while his father was serving as former President Barack Obama’s point man for Ukraine — and as the story goes, it was that relationship that prompted Trump to ask Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to open an investigation into alleged election interference.
Trump and Republicans have argued that the president was acted well within his rights to request that probe, but Democrats have argued that Trump was himself trying to interfere in the 2020 election by looking for dirt on a campaign rival.
For his part, Joe Biden could put the whole matter to rest by simply proving that his and his son’s business dealings in Ukraine were on the up-and-up. But to this point, it seems he isn’t sure whether he’s willing to testify on the matter.
Only time will tell if we ever hear Biden’s side of the story.
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