U.S. Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky defends President Trump ahead of impeachment vote
U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, said he does not think it is appropriate for a U.S. President to nakedly ask a foreign country to provide dirt on a political opponent.
But, Barr said, that’s not what President Donald Trump did when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “look into” former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in a September phone call.
What Trump did is far more complicated than that.
“If there was a naked request from a president to invite foreign interference with nothing else going on, that’s totally different,” Barr said. “What we have here is not that. We have people in the Democratic caucus and in the press jumping to that conclusion when that’s not what’s going on here.”
On Wednesday, Barr plans to vote against impeaching Trump, along with every other Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In an interview with the Herald-Leader Monday, Barr said Trump was just doing his job by asking the Ukrainian President to look into corruption in his country before he released funds appropriated by Congress, calling the interaction “routine diplomacy.”
“The suggestion that it was somehow improper to raise this issue, not withstanding that there is one corruption case, a live real corruption case that involves potentially the president’s political rival,” Barr said. “That’s not the president’s fault. It’s the policy of the United States of America ... for the president to raise these issues.”
The corruption case Barr referenced is the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainain energy company that had Hunter Biden on its board of directors while his father was vice president of the United States. Former Vice President Joe Biden participated in an international effort to urge Ukrainian leaders to fire the prosecutor on the case, who had long been accused of corruption.
Trump has made unsubstantiated allegations, including during his phone call with Zelensky, that Biden advocated for the prosecutor’s dismissal because it would benefit his son.
Barr said the president could have avoided mentioning the Bidens on the call.
“Could he have done it without mentioning the Bidens? Yes he could have,” Barr said. “And that is something people can judge for themselves. But to suggest that Burisma is not a real corruption case that is an important issue when you’re asking that legitimate issue is something totally different.”
The impeachment process has highlighted the stark partisan divide in Washington D.C. during days of public hearings. Barr, who represents a district that Trump won by 16 percentage points in 2016, has consistently attacked the Democrats’ case for impeachment.
Barr said if the roles were reversed, if a Democratic president had done what Trump is accused of doing, he still wouldn’t support the impeachment effort.
“No, I wouldn’t, because again, Democrats have not even alleged, because they don’t even have any evidence, they have not alleged a high crime and misdemeanor or any kind of criminal violation or criminal statute,” Barr said. “They’re not even citing any criminal statute.”
The fact that Trump has not been accused of a crime has become a Republican talking point. When House Republicans voted to impeach former President Bill Clinton, he was accused of lying to a grand jury.
If the House votes to impeach Trump, it will go to the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is up for reelection in 2020, has promised the process will stop.
“I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday, according to NPR. “I’m not impartial about this at all.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 10:28 AM.
