Top Republican launches Biden impeachment inquiry

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, propelling Congress towards a contentious though unlikely effort to remove the president in the wake of two impeachments of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

McCarthy’s move sets the stage for months of divisive House hearings that could distract from congressional efforts to avoid a government shutdown and could supercharge the 2024 presidential race in which Trump hopes to avenge his 2020 election loss to Biden.

White House spokesperson Ian Sams said Republicans have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. “Extreme politics at its worst,” he wrote on social media.

Republicans, who now narrowly control the House, have accused Biden of profiting while he served as vice-president from 2009 to 2017 through his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures, though they have not presented evidence.

Biden previously mocked Republicans over a possible impeachment. No US president has been removed from office by impeachment, but the once-rare procedure has become commonplace.

Many Republicans were infuriated when the House, then controlled by Democrats, impeached Trump in 2019 and 2021, though he was acquitted both times in the Senate. Some hardline Republicans had said they would try to remove McCarthy as the leader of the House if he did not move ahead with an impeachment effort against Biden.

“I am directing our House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy said. “We will go where the evidence takes us.”

A former business associate of the Hunter Biden told a House hearing the president’s son sold the “illusion” of access to power while his father was vice-president, according to a transcript released last month.

McCarthy said lawmakers on three committees will start gathering evidence of possible financial misconduct. They will begin their work without a vote from the full House, as was held before Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Such a vote isn’t required, but can add legitimacy to the effort.

Democrats have sought to portray Republican impeachment talk as an effort to distract public attention from the legal woes of Trump, who faces four separate criminal indictments while running for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination to face Biden.

“Republicans’ probe is a transparent effort to weaponise Congress to do Trump’s bidding,” Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin said in a statement before McCarthy’s announcement.

Trump has pressed Republicans to try to remove Biden from office.

Several hard-right Republicans have said they won’t vote for spending bills without an impeachment inquiry. If Congress doesn’t pass the spending bills by the start of the new fiscal year on Octobers 1, swathes of the government would have to shut down.

The constitution empowers Congress to impeach federal officials including the president for treason, bribery and “other high crimes and misdemeanours”. A president can be removed from office if the House approves articles of impeachment by a simple majority and the 100-seat Senate votes by a two-thirds majority to convict after holding a trial.

Any effort to impeach Biden is be unlikely to succeed; even if the House votes to impeach him — an uncertain prospect, given the party’s narrow 222-212 vote margin — it would almost certainly fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who voted to remove Trump from office in 2021, said the White House had “coddled” Hunter Biden.

“To suggest an inquiry is not inappropriate. That’s very different from an impeachment,” Romney said.

Two times

Trump is the only US president to have been impeached twice. He was acquitted both times after trials in the Senate thanks to votes by his fellow Republicans that prevented the chamber from achieving the two-thirds majority required for conviction.

In his first impeachment, the House in 2019 charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations. The House also impeached him in 2021 on a charge of inciting an insurrection after the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

The first impeachment sought to remove him from office. The second, with a trial held after he left office, sought to disqualify Trump from ever again holding the presidency.

Trump, as he has done with many investigations into his actions, called both impeachments politically motivated witch hunts.

Public opinion polls show many Americans believe Hunter Biden has received special treatment. Half of respondents in a June Reuters/Ipsos poll said he received preferential treatment from prosecutors, who had reached a deal that would allow him to plead guilty to tax charges but avoid a gun-related conviction.

Another Reuters/Ipsos poll in August, conducted after the unravelling of the deal with prosecutors, showed only 49% of respondents said it was “believable” that Hunter Biden’s legal problems were independent of his father’s service as president.

Reuters