Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) refused to say yes or no.
When pressed on whether he believes it’s appropriate for the President of the United States to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival — referring to President Donald Trump’s now-infamous July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showing efforts to pressure Ukraine into manufacturing bogus allegations against the Bidens — Gardner failed to give a direct answer following an address at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce Thursday.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee is having an investigation — a bipartisan investigation. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen though is a very political process take over,” Gardner told reporters. “If you look at what Al Green in Texas, a member of Congress, has said, we need to impeach President Trump now because we might not be able to beat him in November. That’s about politics. That’s not what this serious investigation should be about.”
Asked again to clarify if that means yes or no to the original question, Gardner dodged once again. He argued again that a “very partisan process” is taking place. Gardner then proceeded to rail against the media regarding its political coverage.
“Why is it that when you all do stories or when we see reports in the news it’s about four states: Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina,” Gardner said. “Seems to be about politics and elections other than the serious process that it is.”
Right as a reporter jumped in ask Gardner again if it’s appropriate for a President to ask a foreign government to investigate a political rival, the Republican senator abruptly cut her off to reiterate his previous argument.
“Look, I think we are going to have an investigation — and it’s a non-partisan investigation,” Gardner said. “It’s an answer that you get from a very serious investigation.”
Gardner then tripled down on his original argument when asked if he’d be OK with asking a foreign government to intervene if the request came from a Democrat.
“What we saw immediately was a jump to a very partisan, serious use of a tool in the Constitution,” Gardner said. “This is about an investigation that’s taking place in the Senate Intelligence Committee — that’s where it should be. What we’ve seen from the House of Representatives and Nancy Pelosi is a very partisan, partisan-ized effort.”
Gardner ended his remarks by reiterating that the media only covers four states “every time you do a story on this.”
“It’s about Colorado, California, North Carolina and Arizona,” Gardner said. “That’s what you’re saying over and over again in all these stories. So this is a serious time, a very serious investigation. Let’s have that investigation.”
Watch Gardner’s remarks below:
Breaking: @SenCoryGardner refuses to answer question whether it is appropriate for the President to ask a foreign leader to investigate a rival. Quite the exchange in Denver #copolitics #kdvr pic.twitter.com/5Y0EYOcKjM
— Joe St. George (@JoeStGeorge) October 10, 2019
