Washington (CNN) CNN recently reached out to more than 80 offices for Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate to see if any had concerns about President Donald Trump's public call for foreign governments to investigate Joe Biden, a leading Democratic candidate to replace him as President, and Biden's son Hunter.

Only a few responded; just a handful have expressed misgivings to CNN, other outlets or in their own statements.

In his own statement that later drew a rebuke from the President, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah called Trump's words "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. By all appearances, the President's brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling," Romney said in that statement.

Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, an occasional critic of Trump's who is running for reelection in that conservative state, said in a statement to the Omaha World Herald that if Hunter Biden did something wrong, he should be prosecuted in the US courts, not investigated by China.

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