Democrats are moving ahead with efforts to impeach President Trump accusing the White House of attempting to lock down details of his phone call with the president of Ukraine. However, newly uncovered documents conflict with the story Joe Biden tells about the pressure he put on Ukraine while he was vice president.
All this while the national media has been accused of covering up Biden’s actions while reporting the Trump phone call out of context. But with overwhelming evidence, some national news outlets are being forced to at least acknowledge the Biden scandal.
On the Democratic side, the agenda is clear. “If there were any doubt about the need for impeachment proceeding, there’s none now,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Republicans want to know more about the whistleblower and point out the complaint is only based on secondhand knowledge.
READ: Media misleads on Trump phone call
“When I think of whistleblower complaints, I generally think of someone with firsthand knowledge of the events in question,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
During his testimony before Congress, the acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire also emphasized the complaint was “hearsay” and “not corroborated by other folks.”
The president expressed a similar sentiment in audio leaked to the Los Angeles Times.
“Basically, that person never saw the report, never saw the call. He never saw the call,” the president said during a private event.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine issue again raises questions about Joe Biden’s push to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired while he was vice president.
Biden insists he wanted Viktor Shokin gone because he was corrupt, not because he was investigating Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian company that happened to employ his son Hunter at the time. However, a newly uncovered sworn affidavit tells another story.
“In that statement, Mister Shokin swears under oath he was told he was fired because he refused to drop the Burisma investigation and it made Mister Biden, the vice president, unhappy,” The Hill Vice President John Solomon told Sean Hannity on Fox News Thursday.
In addition, and more damning, Joe Biden bragged during an interview at the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened to withhold $1 billion in American aid to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor investigating his son and the Ukranian company. “Well, son of a bitch,” he admitted on camera, “he got fired!” That clip has not been shown widely, or at all, on most mainstream news outlets. You can see it below.
Heading into an election year, the big question is what do voters think about a push for impeachment?
A new Quinnipiac University Poll shows a clear majority of Americans, 57 percent, do not think the president should be impeached and removed from office.
–Dwight Widaman and wire services
