Joe Biden on Monday said that he would not pardon Trump if he is elected president in 2020. “It wouldn’t unite the country,” the former vice president said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “... This guy does all these things that put us in jeopardy and he gets off? I think this is of a different nature.” Biden then cited President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon after he resigned the presidency in 1974—a move that allowed Nixon not to be prosecuted for his role in the Watergate scandal. Biden said Ford’s pardon was ultimately a political mistake. “And I think President Ford, God love him he’s a good guy, I knew him pretty well, I think if he had to do it over again he wouldn’t have done it… because he didn’t get re-elected,” Biden said.

Biden also spoke on his family’s central role in the impeachment inquiry into Trump. “I’m the reason he’s being impeached. He’s indicted himself by calling in foreign powers to try to impact the election,” Biden said. If elected, the Democratic frontrunner said he would revert the White House back to “the squeaky clean… environment” of the Obama administration. “No one in my family will have an office in the White House, will sit in on meetings as if they’re a cabinet, will in fact have any a business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or to a foreign country,” he said.