WASHINGTON _ Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Congress will have "no choice" but to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump if he does not comply with Democrats' demands for information about his pressure on Ukraine's president to dig up dirt on his chief Democratic rival.
"Stop stonewalling and provide the Congress all the facts it needs," Biden said in a news conference in Delaware. If the president does not comply with all of Congress' requests _ including the Ukraine matter and other investigations _ Biden said, "Donald Trump will leave Congress, in my view, no choice but to initiate impeachment."
That call did not go as far as some of his Democratic rivals, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been calling for Trump's impeachment for months. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday said that he "hopes very much" that Congress will move to impeach.
"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."
But the remarks mark a change of course for Biden, who as recently as Saturday, as the allegations against Trump began to unfold, said he was not yet ready to call for impeachment.
The news conference represented an effort by Biden to go on the offensive against Trump at a time when the president and his allies have launched a barrage of attacks on Biden.
Just moments before Biden's scheduled news conference, Trump tweeted that he had authorized the release of the transcript of his conversation with the Ukrainian president. "You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo!" he wrote.
Trump has admitted he urged the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden's son, Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president and the point person for the Obama administration in dealing with the country. Allegations of corruption or conflict of interest have not been substantiated.
Biden has told supporters that Trump's focus on him with unfounded charges is a sign of his own political strength in the coming race. "I'm going to beat him like a drum," Biden has said.
But the intensifying back-and-forth is the toughest test yet of Biden's central campaign claim that he alone among the big field of 2020 presidential candidates is best equipped fight Trump's famously aggressive campaign tactics in 2020.
