Trump Denies He Tied Ukraine Aid to Corruption Investigation of Biden – The New York Times

In multiple comments to reporters, Mr. Trump sought to deflect attention from his actions and tarnish Mr. Biden, a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“What Biden did is a disgrace. What his son did is a disgrace,” Mr. Trump said. He later added, angrily: “If a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair right now.”

Between events at the United Nations complex, Mr. Trump also tweeted an attack against his accusers as “stone cold Crooked.” And he implied that an unnamed intelligence community whistle-blower who filed a secret complaint about his behavior, based in part on his dealings with Ukraine, might be a traitor: “Is he on our Country’s side,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Where does he come from.”

The identity of that whistle-blower, whom Mr. Trump last week accused of being “partisan,” is not publicly known. The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, is refusing to share the person’s complaint with Congress, as required by law, prompting a growing number of Democrats to consider calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment.

Mr. Trump also alleged to reporters here, without offering proof, that Hunter Biden, an international business consultant during his father’s time in office, “took money” from China, and suggested that the former vice president would strike a softer line toward Beijing as a result. China, Mr. Trump said, “can think of nothing they’d rather see than Biden get in.”

There is no evidence that the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings have had any effect on his father’s public policy positions. Mr. Trump has seized on the elder Mr. Biden’s insistence in 2016 that Ukraine fire its top prosecutor at a time when a Ukrainian company on whose board Hunter Biden sat was suspected of criminal activity. But that prosecutor was widely seen as corrupt himself and was not aggressively pursuing a case against the company, Burisma Holdings.