Sen. Mitt Romney said Friday that President Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine officials to investigate 2020 rival Joseph R. Biden for corruption smacks of politics and is “wrong and appalling.”

“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” the Utah Republican said in a statement. “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

Mr. Romney and Mr. Trump haven’t always seen eye to eye.

Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential bid, but said after his loss to Barack Obama that the former Massachusetts governor “choked.”

Mr. Romney, meanwhile, warned in the race for the 2016 GOP nomination that Mr. Trump did not have the “temperament nor the judgment to be president.”

Mr. Romney also has voiced his disapproval with Mr. Trump’s actions on a number of occasions since entering the Senate this year, but has generally fallen in line with the president and toed the party line in the Senate.

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