Senator Lindsey Graham suggested that the Senate panel he chairs may launch an investigation of Joe Biden and Ukraine after the impeachment trial ends, saying there should be an inquiry to the scale of the Russia investigation.
Graham this week pushed back against the idea of calling Biden as a witness in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Trump faces the prospect of being removed from office after pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, who Trump and other Republicans have accused of corruption regarding his and son Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine. But critics point out that there is no evidence to back this claim.
As The Hill reported, Graham said he wants to see the Bidens come under investigation, and will do it in the Senate Judiciary Committee he chairs if it is not picked up by another agency.
“Nobody has done an investigation anywhere near like the Mueller investigation of the Bidens, and I think they should. And when this is over the Congress will do it, if we can’t have an outside entity do it,” Graham told reporters on Friday.
As vice president, Biden pressured Ukraine to dismiss Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin for concerns that he was not seriously addressing corruption in the Ukrainian government. The move at the time had the support of the international community as well as many Republicans . But Trump now claims that Shokin was fired to stop an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that had Hunter Biden on its board. As The Hill noted, this claim has been repeatedly debunked by fact checkers.
Many Republicans have expressed a desire to have Joe and Hunter Biden appear as witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial, despite protests from Democrats that their testimony would not be relevant to the allegations against Trump. Joe Biden himself has pushed back, saying he would not testify at the trial.
Some Democrats had floated the idea of agreeing to allow Biden to testify in exchange for some top White House officials who Trump had prevented from testifying, but Biden said he would not go for it. Biden said that allowing him to testify would turn the impeachment trial into a “farce.”
“The reason why I would not make the deal, the bottom line is, I, this is a constitutional issue,” he said, via CNN . “And we’re not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater.”
