Biden Says He’d Nominate Obama To US Supreme Court
Joe Biden says he’s open to potentially nominating former President Barack Obama to the US Supreme Court.
The former Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate made the comment while appearing at a campaign event in Washington, Iowa on Saturday.
An attendee asked if he would nominate Obama to sit on the highest court in the country.
In response, Biden replied: ‘If he’d take it, yes.’
If Obama is nominated – and confirmed by the Senate – it would make him only the second president ever to sit as a justice on the Supreme Court.
The first, and only, person to do so is William Howard Taft who served as president from 1909 to 1913.
In 1921, President Warren Harding appointed Taft as the 10th chief justice. He resigned in February 1930 due to his declining health and died the following month.
Yesterday, Biden said there would be ‘no legal basis’ for Republicans to subpoena his testimony in Trump’s impeachment trial, clarifying remarks from Friday that drew criticism.
Trump was impeached after a July 25 phone call to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which he asked for help investigating Biden.
‘I want to clarify something I said yesterday. In my 40 years in public life, I have always complied with a lawful order and in my eight years as VP, my office – unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence – cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests,’ Biden said on Twitter.
‘But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial,’ Biden added.
The former vice president tweeted that subpoenas should ‘go to witnesses with testimony to offer to Trump’s shaking down the Ukraine government – they should go to the White House.’
Trump and fellow Republicans want to call Biden and his son, Hunter, to appear as witnesses during the proceedings for alleged corruption in Ukraine.
But speaking to the editorial board of The Des Moines Register, Biden, the current front runner for the 2020 Democratic nomination, said that compliance with a subpoena would detract from the president’s own actions.
Biden similarly told reporters during a campaign stop in Iowa on his ‘No Malarkey Tour’ that he wouldn’t appear voluntarily, because he doesn’t want to take the attention away from Trump’s ‘crimes’.
The 77-year-old insisted: ‘No, I’m not going to let them take their eye off the ball.
‘The President is the one who has committed impeachable crimes, and I’m not going to let him divert from that. I’m not going to let anyone divert from that’.
He did not address how he would respond to a subpoena until Friday.
‘This is all about a diversion’, Biden told the editorial board when asked about compliance with a subpoena.
‘And we play his game all the time. He’s done it his whole career’.
