Former Vice President Joe Biden rejected a plan to trade his testimony in exchange for Republicans allowing former national security adviser John Bolton to testify.
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that a group of Senate Democrats were considering a trade to allow Joe Biden and Hunter Biden to testify at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in exchange for Republicans agreeing to let Bolton and other Trump administration officials testify.
Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who supports Biden, suggested that Republicans calling him to testify would backfire.
“If you want to give Joe Biden an opportunity to sit in the well of the Senate and answer the question, ‘Do you think the president acted appropriately?’ go right ahead,” he told The Post. “I can’t imagine a person more comfortable in the well of the Senate than a man who spent 36 years here as a United States senator.”
Biden rejects plan:
Biden said on Wednesday that he wants “no part” of the plan.
“The reason I would not make the deal, the bottom line is, this is a constitutional issue,” Biden said. “We’re not going to turn it into a farce or political theater. I want no part of that.”
“No one has suggested my son did anything wrong,” he added. “There’s nobody that’s indicated there’s a single solitary thing he did that was inappropriate or wrong — other than the appearance. It looked bad that he was there.”
Schumer says plan “off the table”:
“I think that’s off the table. First of all the Republicans have the right to bring in any witness they want. They haven’t wanted to and that trade is not on the table,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Wednesday.
Lead impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff said the issue was not up for debate.
“This isn’t like some fantasy football trade, as I said yesterday. ‘We’ll offer you this if you’ll give us that, we’ll offer you a witness that is irrelevant in material, that has no relevant testimony, but a witness that will allow us to smear a presidential candidate if you want to get a legitimate witness,’” he told reporters. “They want to smear Biden. They want to effectuate the scheme that they were unable to do when they tried to get Ukraine to smear the Bidens. They want to use this trial to smear the Bidens. That’s not the purpose of the trial, and the senators should not allow it to be abused in that way.”
