The United States House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to formally authorize its continuing impeachment investigation targeting President Joe Biden, as Republicans rally behind the campaign even though no evidence of misconduct by the Democrat has been found.
The Republican-controlled chamber approved the investigation, which is looking into whether Biden inappropriately benefited from his 53-year-old son Hunter Biden’s international business activities, by a vote of 221-212 along party lines, only hours after the younger Biden refused to speak behind closed doors.
The White House has denounced the investigation as unfounded and politically motivated. Biden is preparing for a rematch with his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, in the 2024 election. Trump is the only president in American history to be impeached twice, and he is currently preparing for four criminal prosecutions.
The effort to remove Biden from office will almost definitely fail. Even if the House votes to impeach the president, a two-thirds vote in the Senate is required to convict him on the charges — a near-impossibility in a chamber where Biden’s fellow Democrats control a 51-49 majority.
However, it might help Republicans promote their corruption claims throughout the 2024 campaign.
The decision comes three months after Republicans launched an informal investigation, and it is not required to remove a president or other person from office.
However, it might provide Republicans with more legal authority to compel Biden’s administration to cooperate, as well as aid to fight Democratic charges that it lacks legitimacy.
House Republicans claim Biden and his family profited from his actions as President Barack Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017, focusing on his son’s business ventures in Ukraine and China during that time.
They discovered evidence that the younger Biden misled clients into believing he could gain access to the vice president’s office. However, they have not given evidence that Biden took any formal acts to assist or benefit from those businesses.
In a statement, Biden slammed House Republicans for failing to act on any of his domestic goals or provide emergency financing for Ukraine and Israel.
“The House Republicans are not with me.” Instead of doing anything to improve the lives of Americans, they are focusing on assaulting me with lies,” Biden stated.
‘THERE IS NO EVIDENCE’
Earlier in the day, Hunter Biden resisted a committee subpoena to testify behind closed doors, saying he would only testify in public because he believed his statements would be distorted otherwise.
“There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen,” Biden stated in a statement.
Members of the committee stated that he would be held in contempt of Congress, which could result in prison time.
“The House has now spoken, and I think pretty loudly, pretty clearly with every single Republican voting in favor of moving into this official impeachment inquiry phase of our constitutional duty to do oversight,” Jim Jordan, a Republican member of the House, stated.
House Republicans from districts won by Biden in 2020 described the investigation as a fact-finding mission.
“The whole point of an inquiry is not to pre-judge,” New York Representative Nick LaLota remarked.
“The average New Yorker is mighty suspicious of folks from the president’s family making tens of millions of dollars in professions in which they had no experience – seems a little fuzzy,” LaLota said, alluding to Hunter Biden’s previous membership on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma.
Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner, was impeached twice by the House during his presidency: once in 2020 for attempting to compel Ukraine into announcing a corruption investigation on Biden, and again in 2021 for attempting to overturn his election loss. Both efforts failed in the Senate.
Hunter Biden, who has spoken publicly about his difficulties with drug and alcohol addiction, is also the focus of a multi-year criminal probe.
He is accused of lying about his drug use when purchasing a weapon and of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. He has pled not guilty to the gun allegations, and his lawyer claims he has paid all of his taxes.
“When I was in the grip of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my money.” But to say that this is grounds for an impeachment investigation is ludicrous. “It’s heinous,” he said.