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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden attempted to clarify his recent announcement that he’d refuse to comply with a subpoena should the Senate issue one forcing his testimony in the impeachment hearing.

The former vice president made the initial remarks in a recent interview with the Des Moines Register. His statements come as some Senate Republicans are calling for Biden and his son Hunter to testify in the impeachment trial.

“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 tweeted Saturday morning. “But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial. That is the point I was making yesterday and I reiterate: this impeachment is about Trump’s conduct, not mine.”

Biden went on to say that the Senate should subpoena White House officials who were witnesses to “Trump’s shaking down the Ukraine government.”

He and his son are two prominent figures in the president’s impeachment. President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate both of the Bidens as well as Burisma, a Ukrainian company that Hunter Biden sat on the board for. The request worked in tandem with Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his investigation into the Bidens.

Biden, in the Des Moines Register interview, claimed that if he were to testify, it would detract from the president’s alleged misconduct.
“What are you going to cover?” Biden said to Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter. “You guys are going to cover for three weeks anything that I said. And (Trump’s) going to get away. You guys buy into it all the time. Not a joke … Think what it’s about. It’s all about what he does all the time, his entire career. Take the focus off. This guy violated the Constitution.”

Democrats are urging Senate Republicans to force witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial; however, the Bidens are two individuals whom the Republicans have wanted to testify, while Democrats don’t support forcing their testimony. The former vice president has previously said that he has no intention of testifying.