Despite the Political Risks: This Is How Republicans Plan to Impeach President Joe Biden

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and leading Republicans have begun strategizing how to move forward with an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden this fall over allegations of financial wrongdoing.

In recent weeks, McCarthy has privately informed Republicans that he plans to proceed with an impeachment inquiry of Biden, and hopes to start the process by the end of September, according to CNN, citing multiple GOP sources familiar with the talks.

It indicated that there is no consensus among the Republican leadership on the idea of conducting an inquiry in the framework of the impeachment of the president because it is fraught with political risks.

Last August, Republican member of the U.S. House, Greg Steube, introduced a draft resolution on impeaching President Biden for serious crimes and irregularities.

In late July, McCarthy publicly announced that he would launch an inquiry if the whistleblower’s allegations of tax wrongdoing were true or if the Biden administration did not cooperate with requests related to the special inquiry into the Democratic president’s family’s financial dealings being conducted by Republican representatives.

For most of the country’s history, only 3 U.S. presidents were subjected to an impeachment inquiry, and only two faced floor votes on charges.

Donald Trump made history by becoming the first president to be impeached twice by the U.S. House of Representatives — the Senate acquitted him both times.

 

Political Impeachment

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican from California) said on September 1 that he would open a formal impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden only through a full vote in the House of Representatives.

“To open an impeachment inquiry is a serious matter, and House Republicans would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes,” McCarthy told Breitbart News, noting that “the American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their representatives.” the elected.”

“That’s why, if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person,” he added.

McCarthy’s statement follows a CNN report on August 28 that Republicans debated whether they could move forward with an impeachment inquiry without a full House vote in order to overcome a lack of GOP support.

House Republicans say they will focus their investigations on the alleged criminal activity of Biden’s son, Hunter, as part of his foreign business dealings.

It will also delve deeper, according to the network, into so far unproven allegations that Joe Biden was involved in bribery or corruption or abused his power to help enrich his son when he was vice president (2009/2017).

While many moderate House Republicans say they are skeptical of launching an impeachment inquiry, citing a lack of evidence, they consider the idea of political impeachment too risky.

They include some of the 18 counties that voted for Biden, and members of the center-right who say they prefer to focus on governance issues.

Senior Republicans spent part of the August recess working to rally Republican lawmakers behind the idea of an inquiry with the aim of launching impeachment measures.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, where articles of potential impeachment proceedings will arise, held a conference call with committee members last week to discuss impeachment and other issues, according to CNN.

During the conference, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told members that McCarthy was seriously discussing an impeachment inquiry, according to one lawmaker, but did not set a timeline.

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said most members expressed support for an inquiry at the convention.

In the same vein, Trump also continues to pressure Republicans to act, and is getting impatient with the pace of their efforts, according to CNN.

The Republican calls came, in conjunction with the statements of former Ukrainian Attorney General Viktor Shokin, in which he accused President Biden of involvement in corruption.

Shokin pointed out that he lost his position because his dismissal was paid and incurred under pressure from Washington, and that Biden paid a bribe amounting to one billion dollars in return for his dismissal, with the case of suspicion and doubts that accompanied his son Hunter’s business with his work on the board of directors of a Ukrainian company in the field of natural gas, Fox News reported.

 

Partisan Stunt

On September 1, NBC News quoted a White House aide as saying, “The White House has set up a war room of more than two dozen attorneys, legislative aides, and communications personnel to lead an offensive response to a possible Republican impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.”

According to the network, efforts have been intensifying, according to eight people familiar with the plans, for months in the Office of the White House Counselor as part of the response to the Republican-led House investigations.

Biden’s aides and allies say they are preparing to hit back hard at the impeachment inquiry, presenting it as an evidence-free partisan stunt that shows Republican penchant for chaos.

It is noteworthy that the White House had begun preparing for accountability on the first day of forming a new majority in the House of Representatives this year, according to NBC News.

A source familiar with White House strategy said aides spent the August break vetting Republican statements, polishing their rhetoric, and preparing a response team.

A White House official said that if Republicans follow through on the threat to pursue an impeachment inquiry in the coming weeks or months, the Biden administration will focus on economic issues that affect people’s lives, especially since the GOP is disconnected from these issues, at a time when it is looking forward to accountability and a spending battle that could lead to government disruption.

The official added that achieving accountability and disrupting the government may coincide with the White House and its Democratic allies seeking to present these developments as instability and chaos caused by the majority in the U.S. House.

In a related context, White House Spokesman Ian Sams criticized, in a statement, Republican representatives in Congress who seek to open an inquiry this fall aimed at isolating U.S. President Joe Biden.

“This inquiry is baseless and would be a disaster for Republicans in Congress,” he said.

Sams added that “there are Republican representatives who admit that there is no evidence of their false allegations, and that pursuing such a partisan stunt would be counterproductive.”

“House Republicans should work with the president on issues that really matter to the American people, such as lowering the cost of living and creating jobs, or boosting health care and education instead of continuing their extremist political war and trying to damage the president politically,” he said.

 

Republican Pressures

There is no constitutional requirement to vote to allow an inquiry, but not holding a vote would contradict McCarthy’s position since 2019, when he urged Democrats to hold a formal vote to allow an impeachment inquiry into former President Donald Trump.

A full House vote would also help McCarthy show his full endorsement of the convention, as well as help bolster the legal argument that impeachment could help Republicans produce more information from the Biden administration in court.

Any impeachment vote would need the support of a majority of the House of Representatives, and with a slim majority in the House and a potentially united opposition from House Democrats, McCarthy may not have the 218 votes needed to open an impeachment inquiry.

Commenting on this, CNN said that skipping the official vote, which would be difficult for many members of the more moderate party, would give the Republican leadership more time to convince the rest of the Republican members to join the impeachment measures.

However, during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, House Democrats ended up voting to formalize their inquiry, setting parameters for the process after initially balking at doing so amid divisions within their own ranks.

Another factor that could complicate the impeachment inquiry timeline is that government funding expires at the end of September.

McCarthy has already indicated that the House would need to pass a short-term spending tranche to keep the government running, which the hardline conservatives have rejected.

CNN said formally moving forward with the impeachment inquiry could help ease pressure from conservatives angry at McCarthy over the spending bracket.

The Speaker of the House himself publicly linked the two cases, warning that the government shutdown could impede the ability of House Republicans to continue their investigations against the Biden administration, in an indication of the pressures McCarthy faces.

Biden also faces charges related to keeping secret official documents in offices used by the U.S. president when he was Obama’s deputy, as well as at his home in Delaware, and in a think tank in Washington, in addition to accusations about his negligence in confronting the Corona epidemic, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and the leniency in border security that led to a large influx of migrants.

The prospect of an impeachment inquiry into Biden comes as his potential opponent in the upcoming presidential election, Donald Trump, faces mounting legal issues, including an indictment regarding his efforts to overturn the election in the lead-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Despite the seriousness of the accusations against him, experts are not likely that holding U.S. President Joe Biden accountable will lead to his removal from office, but they are likely to represent an explicit obstacle to his desire to run for the 2024 presidential elections.