Joe Biden entertained well-heeled donors in Los Angeles County with passages from the whistleblower complaint that sparked a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
“Folks, you may have heard there’s a little going on these days. We have a president who continues to make clear that he meant what he said, he’d like to get foreign help to win elections,” Biden told supporters gathered in San Marino, California, on Thursday. “Folks, I want to read an excerpt from what came out this morning, yesterday, from the whistleblower, who uncovered among other things, among others, what Giuliani and the president were trying to do,” he added, referring to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.
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The whistleblower, reportedly a Central Intelligence Agency officer stationed at the White House, claims Trump improperly leveraged military aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating the former vice president and his son, Hunter Biden, during a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The whistleblower, whose complaint was released Thursday shortly before acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before Congress on the matter, also alleges the Trump administration took steps to conceal the record of the call. A transcript of the call had been made public earlier this week.
Giuliani had been pushing Ukraine to examine Biden for threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees during a 2016 trip to Kyiv if Ukraine didn’t fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. The former New York City mayor asserted there was a potential conflict of interest given Shokin was probing Burisma Holdings, of which Hunter Biden was a board member from 2014 to April 2019. But Vitaliy Kasko, Shokin’s deputy, has stated the Burisma investigation was “dormant” during Biden’s visit.
At another fundraiser Thursday, Biden joked about the whistleblower controversy with a larger crowd, comprised mostly of women, assembled in Pasadena, mimicking Trump during the call.
Biden didn’t reference the Ukraine furor at his third Los Angeles County fundraiser later Thursday, but he quipped before a smaller audience at upscale sushi restaurant Oyabun that they wouldn’t benefit from Trump administration-like tax cuts if he were elected to the White House.
“But! No punishment, either,” he said.
Biden’s comments came at the same time the Washington Post reported that his campaign was weighing rolling out a Wall Street tax, which would target stock and bond sale transactions. The former vice president is the only Democratic presidential front-runner who hasn’t announced a “wealth tax” policy plan like those of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Delaware’s senator for 36 years additionally divulged some of his fundraising figures ahead of the Federal Election Commission’s third financial quarter deadline, boasting his team had received so far 670,000 donations from about 350,000 people, with an average contribution of $46.
