House Republicans Vote To Authorize Biden Impeachment Inquiry

Unable to pass much of anything else, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Washington Post:

House Republicans voted Wednesday to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry against President Biden in an effort to strengthen their oversight powers as Republican lawmakers continue to investigate the Biden family’s finances.

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The inquiry, which was launched without a vote in September by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), then serving as speaker, has so far failed to prove the GOP’s claim that Biden benefited financially from his son’s foreign investment deals.

The vote brought about by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), however, had near-unanimous support among Republicans and comes after the president’s son Hunter Biden on Wednesday defied a congressional subpoena in the probe. Joe Biden is the eighth president to face an impeachment investigation.

No Democrats voted in support of the measure, which passed on a vote of 221-212.

Ahead of the vote, Democrats took to the House floor to denounce Republicans for engaging in what they described as a conspiracy-fueled fishing expedition designed as retribution for the two impeachments of former president Donald Trump. Republicans, meanwhile, argued that the administration was obstructing their investigation by failing to fully comply with the committees’ subpoenas, and accused the president of lying about his involvement with his son’s foreign business dealings.

“Hunter Biden did a press conference — he was supposed to be in a deposition,” said House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “And at that press conference, he said ‘my father was not financially involved in the business.’ Well, that’s an important qualifier. We haven’t heard that for three years. … All we’ve heard is Joe Biden had no involvement. Now his son does a press conference when he’s supposed to be being deposed and says he wasn’t financially involved. Well, what involvement was it?”

The foundation of the impeachment inquiry, outlined by Jordan in a briefing with reporters last week, rests on an unsubstantiated allegation that has become the linchpin of conspiracy theories and false claims regarding the Biden family’s purported corrupt and criminal conduct. Republicans have alleged without evidence that Joe Biden as vice president pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to quash a probe into the former owner of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden sat on the board. Former U.S. officials, Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, and even some Republicans have rebutted that allegation.

As part of the year-long inquiry, House Republicans also have elevated claims that the Biden administration slowed a Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial background, but that testimony has been disputed repeatedly by officials involved in the case.

Biden in a lengthy statement ridiculed the vote as a “baseless House Republican impeachment stunt” and criticized them for not focusing on other issues including Ukraine and Israel, border security and inflation.

“There is a lot of work to be done,” he said. “But after wasting weeks trying to find a new Speaker of the House and having to expel their own members, Republicans in Congress are leaving for a month without doing anything to address these pressing challenges.”