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For Biden, Whistle-Blower Complaint Could Cut 2 Ways Ukraine and Whistle-Blower Issues Emerge as Major Flashpoints in Presidential Race
(about 7 hours later)
DES MOINES — Since President Trump defeated them nearly three years ago, Democrats have warned that Mr. Trump would once again benefit from the interference of foreign governments to help bolster his re-election bid. DES MOINES — Allegations that President Trump courted foreign interference from Ukraine to hurt his leading Democratic rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., dominated presidential politics on Saturday, as Mr. Biden demanded a House investigation of Mr. Trump’s phone call last month with Ukraine’s leader and as Mr. Trump lashed out, denying wrongdoing without releasing a transcript of the call.
Now, as reports that he sought help from the Ukrainian government shake the political world, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the monthslong leader in the primary race, finds himself grappling with the fallout of a still-secret whistle-blower complaint that is said to be about Mr. Trump and his dealings with Ukraine. With Mr. Trump seizing on a familiar defense, saying Democrats were undertaking a “witch hunt” against him on Ukraine, Mr. Biden called on the House of Representatives to begin a new investigation of whether the president sought the interference of a foreign government to bolster his re-election campaign.
For Mr. Biden, it is both the contrast he wants and the controversy he would rather avoid. “This appears to be an overwhelming abuse of power,” Mr. Biden said during a campaign swing in Iowa. “We have never seen anything like this from any president.”
The issue strikes a particular nerve with Mr. Biden, who has long feared putting his family under the harsh spotlight of a presidential campaign. He assailed Mr. Trump during a two-minute encounter with reporters on Saturday morning, insisting that he had never spoken with his son about any overseas work. Mr. Trump is said to have urged the Ukranian president on a July 25 phone call to investigate Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who did business in Ukraine while his father was vice president. Mr. Trump’s request is part of a secret whistle-blower complaint in the intelligence community that is said to involve Mr. Trump making an unspecified commitment to a foreign leader, according to two people familiar with the complaint.
And he cast Mr. Trump’s efforts as a sign of his strength in the race, saying he is the candidate most feared by the administration. The sharp accusations between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden elevated the president’s dealings with Ukraine as a potentially significant new issue in the presidential race, and offered voters a preview of what is likely to be an extraordinary general election contest if Mr. Biden were to win the nomination.
“You should be looking at Trump,” Mr. Biden said. “Trump is doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum. It’s an abuse of power.” The controversy has focused on whether Mr. Trump manipulated foreign policy — a military aid package to Ukraine had been delayed at the time of the phone call — to pressure the country’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to take action to damage Mr. Biden’s election bid.
Though he has yet to call for impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump to begin — as have several of his rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination — Mr. Biden on Saturday tip-toed closer to embracing the idea that has been steadily gaining support on Capitol Hill despite opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On Saturday, Mr. Trump sought to deflect attention from that question by accusing Mr. Biden of acting improperly as vice president in calling for the ouster of a Ukranian prosecutor who had overseen an inquiry into corruption related to the oligarch whose company employed Hunter Biden.
“The House should investigate this. This appears to be an overwhelming abuse of power,” Mr. Biden said. “We have never seen anything like this from any president.”
The revelations offered voters a preview of what is likely to be an extraordinary general election contest if Mr. Biden were to win the nomination, one in which attacks by the president and his team could boomerang, transforming Mr. Biden into a sympathetic figure under attack with foreign help. Mr. Trump defended his own conduct as “perfectly fine” and routine.
It could just as easily mark a defining moment for Mr. Biden, a 76-year-old politician first elected to the Senate in 1972 and long accustomed to playing by the more genteel political rules of a different era. “Now that the Democrats and the Fake News Media have gone ‘bust’ on every other of their Witch Hunt schemes, they are trying to start one just as ridiculous as the others, call it the Ukraine Witch Hunt,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. He said that any effort to investigate him would fail, comparing it to the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, into his ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
[Which Democrats are leading the 2020 presidential race this week?] Intensifying a line of attack he and his allies have stoked for months, Mr. Trump said the real problem was Mr. Biden and questions about what the president described as “the Joe Biden demand that the Ukrainian Government fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son.”
While the new report gives Mr. Biden the one-on-one showdown with Mr. Trump that his campaign has spent months trying to create, it also exposes him and his son, Hunter Biden, to yet another round of probing questions about the younger Mr. Biden’s moneymaking activities in the Ukraine. Referring to his conversation with Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Trump said: “Nothing was said that was in any way wrong, but Biden’s demand, on the other hand, was a complete and total disaster.”
The Biden campaign quickly seized on the furor to portray the president as fixated on, and worried about, a potential general election race against Mr. Biden. No evidence has surfaced to support Mr. Trump’s claim that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the prosecutor general’s dismissal. But some State Department officials had expressed concern that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine could complicate his father’s diplomacy there.
“There is only one candidate the president is trying to get foreign governments to dig up bogus dirt on,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said. The issue strikes a particular nerve for Mr. Biden, who has long feared putting his family under the harsh spotlight of a presidential campaign. During a two-minute encounter with reporters on Saturday morning, he grew irate, angrily insisting that he had never spoken with his son about any overseas work.
At a time when some of the candidates had been shifting their strategy from trying to chip away at Mr. Biden’s persistent lead to attacking the ascendant candidacy of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the new allegations about Mr. Trump and Ukraine once again places Mr. Biden at the center of the 2020 campaign. “You should be looking at Trump,” Mr. Biden said. “Trump is doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum.”
Even as they avoided mentioning Mr. Biden, other Democratic presidential candidates moved quickly to capitalize on the new dynamic in the race. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who rarely mentions Mr. Trump in her stump speech, opened her remarks at a cattle call on Saturday afternoon by excoriating both the president and congressional Democrats.
“He has solicited another foreign government to attack our election system,” she told a crowd of 1,200 cheering Democratic voters gathered in Des Moines for an afternoon of primary speeches. “It is time to call out this illegal behavior and start impeachment proceedings right now.”
Ms. Warren, who first called for Mr. Trump to be impeached in April after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report, went further on Saturday, arguing on Twitter that by failing to act on impeachment, Congress had become “complicit in Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in U.S. elections.”
Though he has yet to call for impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump — as have several of his rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination — Mr. Biden on Saturday tiptoed closer to embracing the idea that has been gaining support on Capitol Hill despite opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Biden, whose appearances on the campaign trail can be halting and sprinkled with misstatements, has generally delivered his strongest performances when focused on Mr. Trump. Speaking about the president allows Mr. Biden to discuss foreign policy and national security, issues that his campaign has said differentiate Mr. Biden, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, from the rest of the 2020 Democratic field.Mr. Biden, whose appearances on the campaign trail can be halting and sprinkled with misstatements, has generally delivered his strongest performances when focused on Mr. Trump. Speaking about the president allows Mr. Biden to discuss foreign policy and national security, issues that his campaign has said differentiate Mr. Biden, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, from the rest of the 2020 Democratic field.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have reportedly pressed for an investigation of the Bidens for weeks, after reports this year in The New York Times and elsewhere examined whether a Ukrainian energy company had sought to buy influence in Washington by hiring Hunter Biden. The younger Biden had a lobbying business in Ukraine while his father was vice president. While Mr. Trump’s attacks give Mr. Biden the one-on-one showdown with the president that his campaign has spent months trying to create, it also exposes him and his son to another round of probing questions about Hunter Biden’s lobbying business in Ukraine.
Mr. Biden’s team believes the accusations that his son improperly leveraged his family name on behalf of his lobbying clients have already been widely debunked in the news media. Still, the re-emergence of the younger Biden’s business dealings this past week invites a new round of scrutiny from the press, allies of Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden’s many remaining opponents in the primary. The Biden campaign moved quickly to warn the news media over the story, underscoring a deep concern about how allegations about the younger Mr. Biden’s work will be received by voters. “Any article, segment analysis and commentary that does not demonstrably state at the outset that there is no factual basis for Trump’s claim, and in fact that they are wholly discredited, is misleading readers and viewers,” said the deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, in an email to reporters.
But Biden advisers also seized on the furor to portray Mr. Trump as fixated on, and worried about, a potential general election race against Mr. Biden.
“There is only one candidate the president is trying to get foreign governments to dig up bogus dirt on,” Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said.
The effort by the president and his team to shift the focus to Mr. Biden could boomerang, transforming him into a sympathetic figure unfairly attacked with foreign help. It could just as easily mark a defining moment for Mr. Biden, a 76-year-old politician first elected to the Senate in 1972 and long accustomed to playing by the more genteel political rules of a different era.
[Which Democrats are leading the 2020 presidential race this week?]
Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman who led the party through Hillary Clinton’s loss to Mr. Trump three years ago, said the exchange on Saturday “in many ways feels like 2016.”
Just the prominent discussion of the actions of Mr. Biden and his son in Ukraine, regardless of the merits of the president’s accusations, has the potential to hurt Mr. Biden, Ms. Brazile said.
“We’re basically creating a political story which right now is undermining Joe Biden when I do believe the real focus should be getting the substance of the complaint out to the American people as soon as possible,” she said.
On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump posted a video mash-up of TV news footage of stories about Mr. Biden’s son. “This is the real and only story,” the president wrote.On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump posted a video mash-up of TV news footage of stories about Mr. Biden’s son. “This is the real and only story,” the president wrote.
So far, Mr. Biden’s rivals, nearly all of whom descended on Iowa this weekend, have resisted taking the bait. Several of his competitors were quick to assail Mr. Trump on Friday, while avoiding commentary about how Mr. Trump’s accusations against the Bidens would affect the Democratic nominating contest. Citing the reports by journalists seemed contradictory given the president’s claim that the media had not reported on Mr. Biden. But the tweets signaled that Mr. Trump and his campaign organization would be doing as much as possible to sow doubt about Mr. Biden.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, whose campaign manager on Friday released a memo stating he would have to drop out of the race if he failed to raise $1.7 million before the end of September, remarked that “this is not a partisan issue,” while Mr. Booker and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas reiterated their calls for Mr. Trump to be impeached. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a Biden backer, said that no matter who emerges as the Democratic nominee in 2020, that person will face misinformation and slashing personal attacks by the president and his campaign.
“I’m going to keep the focus on the fact that Donald Trump has broken the law if this report is accurate and he should be impeached,” former Housing Secretary Julián Castro said during an interview Friday night in Cedar Rapids. “That’s where the focus belongs right now.” “You have any other nominee, Trump will do something comparable to try to disadvantage that nominee,” said Mr. Coons, as he walked with Mr. Biden into a Polk County Democratic Party event. “I don’t see anything about this story that is specific to Joe Biden.”
Ms. Warren, who first called for Mr. Trump to be impeached in April after the release of a report by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, also renewed those demands, but went even further, arguing that by failing to act on impeachment in preceding months, Congress had become “complicit in Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in US elections.” So far, Mr. Biden’s rivals, nearly all of whom descended on Iowa this weekend, have been quick to assail Mr. Trump while avoiding commentary about how the president’s accusations against the Bidens would affect the Democratic nominating contest.
“Today’s news confirmed he thinks he’s above the law,” she said. “If we do nothing, he’ll be right.” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, whose campaign manager on Friday released a memo stating he would have to drop out of the race if he failed to raise $1.7 million before the end of September, remarked that “this is not a partisan issue.” He and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas reiterated their calls for Mr. Trump to be impeached.
Even if Mr. Biden’s primary competitors don’t take direct aim, the perception of the Biden family leveraging its connections cuts a stark contrast with his two leading rivals, Ms. Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, who have centered their candidacies around a fierce populist message of rooting out corruption in Washington. Even if Mr. Biden’s primary competitors don’t take direct aim, the perception of Mr. Biden’s son leveraging his connections cuts a stark contrast with two leading rivals, Ms. Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, who have centered their candidacies around a fierce populist message of rooting out corruption in Washington.
It’s a message that worked in 2016 for Mr. Trump, who cast Hillary Clinton as the avatar of establishment self-dealing, a past-her-prime creature of Washington unable to adjust to the times and produce real change. It’s a message that worked in 2016 for Mr. Trump, who cast Ms. Clinton as the avatar of establishment self-dealing, a past-her-prime creature of Washington unable to adjust to the times and to produce real change.
Mr. Biden’s team is acutely aware of that comparison, and a few hours after Mr. Biden’s non-comment, his campaign decided to go further. Mr. Biden’s team is acutely aware of that comparison. After Mr. Biden initially gave only a meager retort to the issue Friday, his campaign decided to go further.
Sensing an opportunity to highlight Mr. Trump’s fixation with Mr. Biden, his aides released a statement in his name blistering the president for “abhorrent” conduct and demanding Mr. Trump release the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian leader and allow the Director of National Intelligence to release the whistle-blower’s claims to Congress. Sensing an opportunity to highlight Mr. Trump’s fixation with Mr. Biden, his campaign released a statement in his name blistering the president for “abhorrent” conduct and demanding Mr. Trump release the transcript of his call with the Ukrainian leader and allow the director of national intelligence to release the whistle-blower’s claims to Congress.
Advisers to Mr. Biden said his initial reluctance reflected his prudence about discussing sensitive national security matters rather than unease with the work of his son in Ukraine. But the former vice president is highly sensitive about questions regarding his family, and it was not until other outlets had confirmed the initial Wall Street Journal report that the Biden campaign determined it should try to go on the offensive. Advisers to Mr. Biden said his initial reluctance to comment reflected his prudence about discussing sensitive national security matters rather than unease with the work of his son in Ukraine. But the former vice president is highly sensitive about questions regarding his family, and it was not until other outlets had confirmed the initial Wall Street Journal report that the Biden campaign determined it should try to go on the offensive.
His appearances on Friday were marked by moments of testiness. Matt Stevens and Katie Glueck contributed reporting from New York and Katie Rogers and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting from Washington.
While taking questions outside a Cedar Rapids nature center Friday afternoon, Mr. Biden offered a sharp retort to Angie Weiland, a 59-year-old dental hygienist, who pressed him to support a single-payer health care plan like one backed by Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren.
“God love you, you’ve got the right candidate in Bernie or Elizabeth or whoever you have,” Mr. Biden said. “Tell Elizabeth it’s going to cost a lot of money and you have to raise people’s taxes.”
A few hours later, Mr. Biden shot back at the female moderator leading a forum on L.G.B.T.Q. issues after she questioned his record and his contention, offered in February and then quickly retracted, that Vice President Mike Pence is “a decent guy.”
Before an audience of 700 activists at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Biden sarcastically called his inquisitor, the Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Liz Lenz, “a lovely person,” prompting her to reply: “Just asking the questions people want to know.”
Offstage after their exchange, she wrote on Twitter that Mr. Biden had called her “a real sweetheart,” a comment she said in a subsequent interview that she found to be “a little condescending.”
By Friday night, Mr. Biden’s campaign was fully embracing the argument that Mr. Trump’s attempted intervention with Kiev was evidence about which candidate he did not want to run against, blasting out a fund-raising email that even alluded to Hunter Biden. “Donald Trump asked a foreign leader eight times to investigate my family,” the money request went. “But I’m only going to ask you once.”
While Mr. Biden may embrace that message, his rivals have repeatedly questioned his age and his grasp on the fiercely polarized politics of the Trump era.
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota cited her past three years in the Senate as experience that differentiated her from Mr. Biden.
“I’ve been able to navigate through this recent era, the Trump era,” she said. “I’ve been living it for two years.
Matt Stevens and Katie Glueck contributed reporting from New York and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting from Washington.