WASHINGTON _ Former Vice President Joe Biden plans to say that Congress will have "no choice but to impeach" 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.
"He's going to make the point that Trump's latest abuses are on top of all his prior abuses," Biden's campaign said in a preview of remarks he plans to make at a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Delaware. "He's going to call on Trump to comply with all of Congress' lawful requests for information _ in the Ukraine matter and in other investigations _ and if Trump does not comply, Congress has no choice but to impeach."
That call does 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.
But the planned 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 represents 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.
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.
