America stepped closer to a legal reckoning for President Joe Biden, as the Speaker of the House announced he formally launched an impeachment inquiry into the president for “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption.”
Biden “did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday. House Republicans found evidence the Biden family collected millions of dollars from overseas accounts, using 20 front groups, and that “more than 150 transactions involving the Biden family and other business associates … were flagged as suspicious activity by U.S. banks.” House investigations discovered that, as vice president, Biden used “his official office to coordinate with Hunter Biden’s business partners” in Ukraine. When investigated, “the president’s family has been offered special treatment by Biden’s own administration” in the form of an excessively generous plea bargain sparing Hunter Biden any jail time and granting him immunity from future prosecution.
“Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption,” Speaker McCarthy concluded. Having encountered administration stonewalling, the new impeachment powers will give House investigators “the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public.”
“We support the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” said the chairmen of the House Committees on Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and Means in a joint statement. They vowed to “continue to work to follow the facts to ensure President Biden is held accountable for abusing public office for his family’s financial gain.”
Their committees have continually dripped new facts suggesting the Biden family presided over a vast foreign influence-peddling enterprise that netted at least nine members of the family payments totaling tens of millions of dollars from China, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and Kazakhstan. Then-Vice President Biden used a number of aliases and informed his son about relevant meetings that would affect Hunter Biden’s business interests in Ukraine. The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday demanded the government turn over all records related to Biden’s decision to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine unless the president fired investigator Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the energy company that paid Hunter Biden $1 million a year: Burisma Holdings Ltd.
While impeachment inquiries into whether the president committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” historically required a House vote, McCarthy followed “the precedent set forward by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,” who lowered the standard by unilaterally declaring an impeachment inquiry during her first impeachment of President Donald Trump in the election year of 2020, said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who filed one of the three separate sets of impeachment articles pending against the president. Greene called his decision “a great, bold move.”
McCarthy also lined up support from the chamber’s top vote-counter. “I fully support Speaker McCarthy’s commitment to follow the facts wherever they lead and ensure no one, not even President Biden, is above the law,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told Breitbart News.
Senate conservatives signaled their support for the measure, which will likely lack the two-thirds margin necessary to remove Biden as president. “The weight of evidence that Joe Biden received bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese Communist Party officials is overwhelming. The House is doing the right thing by opening this impeachment inquiry,” said Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “I’m grateful that the House got the facts, and they’re going to keep going,” Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) told Fox Business.
But some remained skittish about the impeachment. “We’ve got our hands full here trying to get through the appropriations process and not have an omnibus,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “I don’t have any advice to give to the House. They’ve got a totally different set of challenges than we do. And so, I think the best advice for the Senate is to do our job and we’ll see how this plays out later.”
Democrats came out swinging against the move. After the media spent years warning that any attempt to delegitimize government amounted to Russian propaganda threatening “our democracy,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) dismissed the investigation as an “illegitimate impeachment inquiry.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who supported both impeachments of President Donald Trump, branded this impeachment inquiry “absurd” and the fruit of Republican “witch hunts.”
In an odd spectacle, Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) greeted the news of the impeachment inquiry by mockingly saying, “Oooooh! Please don’t do it!” as a staffer escorted him away from reporters.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
