Biden vs. Republicans: After Trump Impeachment, Lindsey Graham To Target Top Democrat For Ukraine Role

With former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign energized by his Super Tuesday showing, Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday tried to tamp down the enthusiasm, saying it was likely the Democratic presidential hopeful would have to deal with questions about his role in Ukraine anticorruption efforts.

The impeachment case against President Trump rested on his request to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for an investigation into Biden’s role in ousting a prosecutor the international community viewed as corrupt. Biden has said, under instructions from then-President Barack Obama, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine in 2014 unless President Petro Poroshenko removed Viktor Shokin from the state prosecutor’s office and cleaned up corruption.

“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden recalled in 2018.

At the time, Biden’s son, Hunter, was on the board of the Ukraine energy company Burisma and collecting a salary of $50,000 a month. Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky was investigated in 2010-12 for money laundering, tax evasion and corruption, but the investigation had been closed by the time Biden conducted his pressure campaign.

Trump and his supporters have tried to frame the events as an attempt by Biden to interfere in an investigation to protect his son – something that both the former vice president and his son have denied vehemently.

"My son and I do not and never have ... [talked] about their policies at all. So, there would never be any conflict that I ever in fact influenced because I didn't know. Period," Biden said while campaigning in Iowa ahead of the Feb. 3 caucuses.

Trump’s supporters tried to equate the president’s strong-arming of Zelensky with the officially sanctioned actions taken by Biden to deflect the impeachment allegations. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani also has tried to convince the Justice Department to investigate Biden and his son.

Asked whether the allegations will resurface should Biden capture the Democratic presidential nomination, Graham, R-S.C., responded: “If you're going to run for President and you were in charge of the Ukrainian anti-corruption campaign as VP and your son's sitting on the most corrupt company in the country while you're trying to clean up the country -- yeah, that'll come up.”

Graham said he has no plans to investigate Biden in the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., would handle the issue in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.