The House of Representatives authorized this Wednesday, the 13th, the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with all Republicans supporting the process with a strong political nature, despite persistent concerns among some members of the opposition party that the investigation is still did not produce evidence of misconduct on the part of the President.
The 221-212 vote led the entire Republican caucus in the House of Representatives to support an impeachment process that could lead to the maximum penalty for a President: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which induce removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.
Biden, in a rare statement about the impeachment process, questioned the priorities of Republicans in the House of Representatives in pursuing an investigation against him and his family.
“Instead of doing anything to help improve the lives of Americans, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” the President said after the vote.
“Instead of doing their urgent work, they are wasting time on this baseless political maneuver that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts,” he concluded.
Authorizing the inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation will extend until 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and appears likely to face former President Donald Trump, who was impeached twice during his time in the White House.
Trump has pressured his GOP allies in Congress to move quickly with Biden’s impeachment as part of his calls for revenge and retaliation against his political enemies.
The decision to hold a vote came as House Speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced increasing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong investigation centered on the business dealings of Biden family members.
Although the investigation raised ethical questions, no evidence emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or when he was vice president.
“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not preempt the outcome of the investigation,” House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement after the vote.
And they concluded: “But it is impossible to ignore the record of evidence.”
House Democrats remained in united opposition to the inquiry resolution, calling it a hoax perpetrated by those on the other side of the aisle to avenge the two impeachments against Trump.
“This is all an extreme political maneuver. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, no integrity. It’s quite a spectacle,” said Congressman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a floor debate.
Some House Republicans, particularly those from politically divided districts, have been hesitant in recent weeks to vote to impeach Biden, fearing a significant political cost.
But GOP leaders have maintained in recent weeks that the resolution is just a step in the process, not a decision to remove Biden.
That message appears to have won over skeptics.
“As we have said many times, voting for an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” said Congressman Tom Emmer, a member of the Republican Party leadership team, at a press conference on Tuesday.
Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps in the impeachment process be considered.”
Most Republicans reluctant to support impeachment proceedings have also been swayed by the leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them a better legal standing, as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis of their requests for information.
Last month, a letter sent by a White House lawyer to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate, given that the House had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry through a floor vote. .
Richard Sauber, special counsel to the President, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.”
Congressman Dusty Johnson said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the President, “that’s not what this week’s vote would be about either.”
“We’ve had enough political challenges in this country,” he said.
“I don’t like the obstruction that the administration has done, but, if we don’t have the receipts, this should condition what the Chamber does in the long term”, he concluded.
Republican Congressman Don Bacon, who has long opposed moving forward with the process, said the fact that the White House questioned the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped win his support.
“I can argue for an inquiry at this point,” he told reporters this week and added, “We’ll see what they find.”
House Democrats have remained united in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a sham used by the Republican Party to divert attention from Trump and his legal troubles.
“You don’t start an impeachment process unless there is real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Jerry Nadler, the senior Democratic congressman on the House Judiciary Committee who oversaw the two cases against Trump.
“There are none here. None,” she stressed.
Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the President and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation to date, saying they have already made a huge amount of documents available.
Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-level Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the President’s son, Hunter Biden.
While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the President himself, they have been particularly interested in Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings, which they accuse the President of personally benefiting from. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on allegations of whistleblower interference in the Justice Department’s long-running investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and gun use.
Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states due to the special counsel investigation. He is charged with firearms charges in Delaware alleging he violated laws against drug users who own guns in 2018, a period in which he acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special Counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.
Democrats have admitted that while the president’s son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.
“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden has done a lot of inappropriate things. He has been charged and will stand trial,” Nadler said. “There is no evidence that the president did anything improper.”
Hunter Biden arrived for a rare public statement outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not attend his private testimony scheduled for that morning. The president’s son defended himself against years of attacks from the Republican Party and said his father had no financial involvement in his business.
His lawyer offered for Biden to testify publicly, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony.
“Republicans don’t want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here”.
GOP lawmakers said that since Hunter Biden was a no-show, they will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against him. “Today he got into more trouble,” Congressman James Comer, chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, told reporters.