It would be an “impeachable offense” if President Trump talked about Joe Biden with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) on Monday.
“I mean extorting a foreign leader for the purposes of getting that leader to do your political work to try to find dirt on your opponent is extortion,” Himes said during an interview on CNN’s New Day.
“Of course, it’s an impeachable offense,” he concluded.
On Sunday, Breitbart News reported that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) echoed Himes’ statement in a tweet, stating it would be “troubling” if the president were to request that Zelensky investigate Biden.
“If the President asked or pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his political rival, either directly or through his personal attorney, it would be troubling in the extreme,” he wrote.
Himes and Romney’s comments come after a whistleblower alleged in a Wall Street Journal report that the president urged Zelensky during a July phone call to look into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and his business dealings in Ukraine.
The report stated:
“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” whether allegations were true or not, one of the people said. Mr. Trump didn’t mention a provision of foreign aid to Ukraine on the call, said this person, who didn’t believe Mr. Trump offered the Ukrainian president any quid-pro-quo for his cooperation on an investigation.
However, congressional Republicans recently defended President Trump against the accusations.
“It’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Saturday. “Democrats come out, they’re all spun up, Adam Schiff makes all kinds of statements, and then when the facts come out — Whoa, different story! This seems to be the same kind of deal.”
On Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight, president of the Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer, said the media are trying to make it look like a Biden scandal is actually a Trump scandal.
Schweizer commented:
What’s interesting about this is that Hunter Biden has no background in Ukraine. He has no background in energy or natural gas or anything like that, but of course his father, the vice president at the time, was the point person on U.S. policy towards Ukraine, and the money we’re talking about here is eye-popping. Hunter Biden was getting $83,000 a month from this Ukrainian energy company where he had no background.
“So the immediate question becomes, he’s not selling his expertise — because he has none in this field — what is he getting paid for?” he concluded.