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Sunday 6 October 2019

FLASHBACK: Biden Warned Against Dangers Of Partisan Impeachment In 1998

Joe Biden is a big backer of impeachment — at least of President Donald Trump.
Biden said late last month that if Trump stonewalls Congress’s requests for information on Ukraine, he “will leave Congress, in my view, no choice but to initiate impeachment.”
“That would be a tragedy, but a tragedy of his own making,” the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said. “It’s time for the Congress to fully investigate the conduct of this president.”
But he thought much differently when Bill Clinton — through “a tragedy of his own making” — was impeached for perjury.
“The framers were concerned that any process whereby the Legislative Branch – the branch they deemed ‘the most dangerous’ – whereby the legislative branch could sit in judgement of a president who would be vulnerable to the abuse of partisan factions,” Biden said on the Senate floor in 1998. “They feared that this most dangerous branch could sit in judgment of a president and would be vulnerable to abuse by partisan factions.”

Biden cited the Founding Fathers again on the dangers of impeachment. “So the Framers were fully aware that the impeachment process could become partisan attacks on the president, charged with animosity generated by all manner of prior struggle and disagreements over executive branch decisions, over policy disputes, over resentment of losing the prior election, and God only knows what else,” he said in 1998.

The Founders specifically targeted the legislative branch, Biden said, knowing that partisan politics could be used “to overturn the will of the American people.”
“Instead of them writing about warning about the abuse of power by the president requiring impeachment, they wrote about and were concerned about and more debate was conducted about the abuse of power by political factions in the Legislative Branch to overturn the will of the American people.”

Last week, Biden said it was Trump that abused power.
“There’s much more at stake than whether or not he’s acting so bizarrely,” Biden said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” “The idea that someone would call the head of a foreign state, ahead of time withhold significant military aid that’s badly needed in order to prevent the Russian separatists, who are in Ukraine, from taking over Ukraine … It’s such a blatant abuse of power that it just — I don’t think it can stand.”
And — at least this time, anyway — he supported Congress on impeachment. “Based on the material that they acknowledged today, it seems to me, it’s awful hard to avoid the conclusion that it is an impeachable offense and a violation of constitutional responsibility,” Biden said. “I am confident in the ability of the House and Senate to deal with this. My job is just to go out and flat beat him.”
He also said it is the president who believes he is above the law.
“We have a president who believes there is no limit to his power,” Biden said. “We have a president who believes he can do anything and get away with it. We have a president who believes he is above the law.”

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