Biden accuses Trump of trying to ‘hijack’ 2020 election with foreign help

Former Vice President Joe Biden accused President Trump of enlisting foreign aid to try to “hijack” the 2020 election as the scandal around the White House’s dealing with Ukraine grows.

Biden told attendees at a private fundraiser in California on Thursday that Trump is trying to “hijack an election” by pushing Ukraine to investigate his son and that “He’d like to get foreign help to win elections,” according to a pool report of the event.

{mosads}“There’s nothing anybody in my family did wrong … at all,” Biden added.

Biden’s remarks are part of an escalating uproar among Democrats over a July call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he suggested he probe Biden about his role in lobbying Ukraine to dismiss a prosecutor who was investigating a natural gas company on whose board Biden’s son sat.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump said on the call, according to a memorandum. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”

A declassified version of a whistleblower complaint that first sounded the alarm over the conversation says “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge” of the call expressed concern that Trump was using his office for his personal political gain.

No evidence has emerged that Biden was acting with his son’s interests in mind. The former prosecutor in question also said Thursday that his investigation Biden’s son was abandoned after turning up no evidence of wrongdoing on Hunter Biden’s behalf. 

Biden has repeatedly railed against Trump over the scandal, slamming it as an “abuse of power” that could lead to impeachment based on the House’s findings.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Tuesday House Democrats would launch a formal impeachment investigation in the aftermath of the whistleblower complaint of Trump’s call with Zelensky, fueled in part by concerns that Trump may have tied military aid to Ukraine’s cooperation.