Biden campaign blasts Republican request for classified VP documents

By Daniel Lippman

The Biden campaign slammed the Republican National Committee on Tuesday night for urging former Vice President Joe Biden to release the transcripts of his calls with Ukrainian and Chinese leaders, saying it would not be legal or even physically possible for Biden to do that.

“Imagine our disbelief that Republicans called for Joe Biden to break the law and release classified transcripts he doesn’t have access to or permission to release, given their track record for holding politicians who commit crimes accountable and their general ethical and moral conduct across the board,” Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo said in a statement provided exclusively to POLITICO.

On Tuesday afternoon, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel called for Biden to release the transcripts of his calls during his years as VP “while his son was conducting shady business deals in those countries.” There’s no indication that Hunter Biden did anything illegal in his business dealings in Ukraine.

“With their newfound sense of transparency, will they also ask President Donald Trump to release his tax returns, something he promised to do nearly four years ago?” Ducklo added.

The RNC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the Biden campaign’s statement.

On the same day that Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an impeachment inquiry into Trump following reports the president told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son for corruption, Biden went further than he ever has done so in calling for Congress to consider impeaching Trump.

He said in Wilmington, Delaware, that while he could handle political attacks, if “we allow a president to get away with shredding the United States Constitution, that will last forever.” He also said that if Trump “continues to obstruct Congress and flout the law, Donald Trump will leave Congress in my view no choice but to initiate impeachment.” Biden said that such an impeachment would constitute a “tragedy” but one of Trump’s own making.

After his comments, McDaniel called Biden “just as extreme as the rest of the 2020 Democrats who are desperate to bring President Trump down. Instead of backing a baseless impeachment effort, Biden should be answering for the only scandal that exists: Why a corrupt Ukrainian company paid his son $50,000 a month to lobby the Obama-Biden administration, and why Biden threatened the Ukrainians if they failed to fire a prosecutor investigating the company?”