Joe Biden’s campaign amplified its attacks on President Trump, accusing him of covering up his role in the Ukraine affair.
“Donald Trump’s abuse of power makes him one of the most divisive, unfit individuals to occupy the Oval Office in our nation’s history. His willingness to sell out our national interest for his personal gain endangers our security and his attempts to cover it up put the stability of our democracy at risk,” the former vice president’s deputy campaign manager and communications director Kate Bedingfield said in a statement on Thursday.
Bedingfield attributed Trump’s actions to “his deep, fully substantiated fear that Joe Biden will beat him in November 2020,” adding that Biden was best positioned to “restore trusted leadership at home and dignified statesmanship” as he vies for next year’s Democratic presidential nomination.
The Biden campaign’s statement was issued after the underlying whistleblower complaint, in which a reported Central Intelligence Agency officer stationed at the White House alleged Trump improperly leveraged military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, was declassified and made available to the public. The complaint claims the Trump administration tried to conceal the July 25 phone call between the two leaders.
The complaint’s release was followed by acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire appearing in front of the House Intelligence Committee as congressional Democrats embark on a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump over the matter. While Maguire testified before lawmakers that it was important to protect the identity of the whistleblower, vowing to protect him or her from retaliation, it later emerged Trump told staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations around the same time the person who helped the whistleblower was “close to a spy,” alluding to the “old days” when punishment for spying was handled differently.
Bedingfield, in reaction, said, “And now we know that President Trump’s response to all of this was to privately issue a thinly veiled threat this morning to execute the national security professionals who followed their oath to uphold the Constitution by bringing this to light.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, 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 said he was concerned about a potential conflict of interest given that Shokin was probing Burisma Holdings at the time. Hunter Biden served on the board of the natural gas company from 2014 to April of this year. But Vitaliy Kasko, Shokin’s deputy, said the Burisma investigation was “dormant” during Biden’s visit.
