Donald Trump has claimed that Joe Biden would get “the electric chair right now” if he were a Republican, as a row over allegations that the President bullied Ukraine to look for dirt on his Democrat rival intensified.
Mr Trump denied that he had threatened to withhold US aid to Ukraine unless it launched a probe into Mr Biden’s son, Hunter, and his alleged dealings with a Ukrainian gas company.
And he sought to turn the tables on the Democrat frontrunner to challenge him in next year’s election by suggesting it was the former vice president who attempted to blackmail Ukraine in 2016.
“I think it was $1.2 billion he wasn’t going to give unless they get rid of a prosecutor who is investigating his son and the company that his son works for,” Mr Trump said.
“If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did… they’d be getting the electric chair right now.”
He also took aim at the media.
“You’re a faker, you’re a fake news group of people, you don’t want to report that. I didn’t do it,” he said, referring to suggestions he had threatened to withhold US aid.
But Mr Trump’s defiance failed to head off the scandal as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called a meeting of senior Democrats on Capitol Hill today to discuss whether the issue warranted launching impeachment proceedings against the President.
Mr Trump also faced new claims that he personally ordered a freeze on $391 million (£315 million) in aid to Ukraine just days before allegedly pressing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Mr Biden.
According to the Washington Post, he issued the order to the Pentagon and State Department via his White House Chief-of-Staff Mick Mulvaney.
Earlier, Mr Trump had appeared to suggest there was nothing wrong with linking American funding for the former Soviet republic with a corruption probe into Mr Biden and his son.
“Why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?” he asked.
Initially, he said he hoped to release a transcript of his July 25 phone call with Mr Zelensky that he claimed would exonerate him.
However, he later said he did not want to set a bad precedent by making the document public.
It is understood the withholding of US aid did not come up in the phone call and that the Ukrainian government learned about the delay a month later.
Mr Trump’s critics claim that tying the demand for an inquiry into the Bidens with the freezing of US aid to Ukraine’s military would constitute an abuse of power by the president and an impeachable offence.
