Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said President Trump might have acted inappropriately toward Ukraine, but it doesn’t mean he should be removed from office.
“I think ferreting out corruption is absolutely the right thing to do,” the Iowa senator told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, referring to Trump’s explanation for why he wanted Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president.
However, Ernst said she would not have made military aid to the country dependent on the investigations.
“The president has a lot of latitude to do what he wants to do,” Ernst, 49, said. “I think, generally speaking, going after corruption would be the right thing to do. He did it maybe in the wrong manner. But I think he could have done it through different channels.”
She said she would be voting to acquit Trump, 73, when the Senate takes a vote Wednesday. Ernst also said she was curious to see whether Trump’s focus on Biden would influence how Democrats vote in the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
Biden, 77, argued that Trump’s lawyers were trying to use the impeachment trial to smear him after Ernst made similar comments last week about the trial’s potential impact on his performance in the caucuses.
“The information about the Bidens is out there. And so now it is up to the American people to decide, you know, was that a good choice for Hunter Biden to be on that board, especially at a time when his father was trying to ferret out corruption in Ukraine — having a son working for the most corrupt oligarch in Ukraine,” Ernst said.
