Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on Saturday joined her colleague Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) in condemning President Donald Trump for suggesting China investigate the dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, calling the move “completely inappropriate.”
“I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent. … It’s completely inappropriate,” Collins told the Bangor Daily News.
The Maine Republican’s comments come after President Trump said China should investigate the Biden family for alleged corruption.
“China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as Ukraine,” the president told reporters outside the White House ahead of a visit to Florida to deliver remarks on Medicare.
As Breitbart News reported, Hunter Biden’s investment company secured a $1.5 billion investment deal with the Bank of China after traveling with his father on Air Force Two to the country in 2013.
President Trump also re-upped his call for Ukraine to look into the Biden family’s dealings in the eastern European country.
“I would think that if they were honest about it, they would start a major investigation” into the former second family, the president replied when asked if Ukraine should also probe into the Bidens. “Nobody has any doubt that they weren’t crooked; that was a crooked deal, 100 percent.”
As Breitbart News reported earlier this year:
Biden forced out former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin as he was investigating an energy company called Burisma Holdings, which was paying Biden handsomely as a member of its board. The former vice president even boasted to the Council of Foreign Relations last year that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid unless the prosecutor was fired. (He did not tell the audience about his son’s role.)
Collins’ criticism came one day after Romney proclaimed that President Trump’s suggestion for foreign governments to look into Biden’s dealings “wrong and appalling.”
The Utah Republican wrote on Twitter Friday:
When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated. By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) was the first Republican senator to come out against the president highlighting the Biden’s alleged corruption, saying in a statement Thursday that “Americans don’t look to Chinese commies for the truth”
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