FLASHBACK: Biden Called Impeachment A ‘Partisan Lynching,’ Said History Would Judge Those Pushing It

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In a newly surfaced video, former Vice President Joe Biden cautioned political parties from pursuing impeachment for partisan purposes. This process, Biden described, amounted to a “political lynching” which would be judged by history.

“Even if the President should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard,” then-Senator Biden said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during an interview in 1998, speaking of then-President Bill Clinton.

The video was unearthed after Biden openly criticized President Trump for similarly describing his partisan impeachment inquiry as a “lynching.”

“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!” Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday morning.

Biden rejected the tweet and said the word “lynching” should never be used to describe the process.

“Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution,” Biden tweeted later that afternoon. “Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.”

Trump may have intentionally used the word “lynching” because he knew of the 1998 Biden interview and the Trump campaign quickly seized on Biden’s new tweet.

Tim Murtaugh, Trump’s Director of Communications for his 2020 campaign, tweeted an article of the 1998 interview and said Biden should have “seen this one coming.”

CNN reports:

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday denounced President Donald Trump’s comparison of the ongoing impeachment inquiry to a “lynching,” but in a 1998 interview, the then-senator from Delaware also invoked the term in reference to impeachment.

The Biden campaign declined to comment. Later on Tuesday night, Biden apologized for his words in a tweet.

“This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that,” Biden said. “Trump on the other hand chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word lynching and continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily.”

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