Democrats are ecstatic that they have successfully forced an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, but it all may backfire on them and their frontrunner candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter are caught up in their own mess in Ukraine. While the allegation against Trump is that he demanded a quid pro quo from the Ukrainian president, trying to trade millions in U.S. aid for a “favor,” Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month for his work with Ukraine’s largest private gas company in Ukraine.
Should impeachment pass the House — and that is expected, with Democrats solidly in control — the Senate would then hold a trial to decide whether to remove Trump from office. Republicans then would call witnesses to testify, and experts expect Joe and Hunter Biden to take the stand.
“I don’t think the Dems have thought this through at all,” one Senate staffer told The Washington Times.
Hunter Biden made hundreds of thousands of dollars through his employment with Burisma, despite having no known qualifications for the job. And after a prosecutor began looking into the company, then-Vice President Biden demanded that the prosecutor be fired.
Biden is on tape discussing his push for the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, bragging he had threatened to withhold $1 billion until Shokin was canned. “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” he says he told Ukrainian leaders. “Well son of a bitch, he got fired,” Biden says with a smile in the video clip.
Former Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli said last week that the Ukraine allegations will hurt Biden.
“It is hard to imagine a Democratic primary electorate witnessing this spectacle of $50,000 a month to Hunter Biden, the contradictory information about whether there was consultation with him and his father, the rather unseemly view of this, that the Democratic primary electorate is going to decide this is our guy,” said the former senator from New Jersey.
Sen. Rand Paul said senators could have a tough time differentiating what Trump is accused of doing from what Biden actually admits to doing.
“I think if you look at it objectively, have Republicans or Democrats threatened aid in the past if they don’t get what they want?” the Kentucky Republican said. “It sounds like that’s what Joe Biden did. It sounds like that’s what four Democrat senators did. It sounds like what [Sen. Chris] Murphy did a month ago. And then someone accused the president of the same thing.”
The Times said in addition to Biden possibly being forced to testify, “so could many of his chief rivals — the half-dozen senators also vying for Democrats’ presidential nomination, impeachment experts said.”
“For that matter, if the House chooses to impeach Mr. Trump on charges stemming from the special counsel’s Russia investigation, aides said it could open the door to witnesses such as fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok or even major figures from the Obama administration,” the Times said. “Mr. Trump could even be present for the entire spectacle. Experts said the Senate would have a hard time refusing him if he demanded to confront the witnesses against him.”