Republican US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday (local time) launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, propelling Congress toward a long-shot effort to remove the Democratic president that follows two impeachments of former President Donald Trump.
McCarthy's move sets the stage for months of divisive House of Representatives hearings that could distract from lawmakers' efforts to avoid a government shutdown and could supercharge the 2024 presidential race, in which Trump hopes to avenge his 2020 election loss to Biden and win back the White House.
White House spokesperson Ian Sams said Republicans have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.
"Extreme politics at its worst," Sams wrote on social media.
Republicans, who now narrowly control the House, have accused Biden of profiting while he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017 from his son Hunter Biden's foreign business ventures, though they have not presented substantiation.
"We will go where the evidence takes us," McCarthy said.
Biden previously had mocked Republicans over a possible impeachment. No US president has ever been removed from office by impeachment, but the procedure - once a rarity - has become commonplace.
Many in McCarthy's party were infuriated when the House, then controlled by Democrats, impeached Trump in 2019 and 2021, though he was acquitted both times in the Senate. Some hardline Republicans had said they would try to remove McCarthy as the leader of the House if he did not move ahead with an impeachment effort against Biden.
FEDERAL PROBE OF HUNTER
Republicans have been investigating Hunter Biden's business activities for years, and a federal prosecutor is also pursuing criminal tax and firearms charges against the president's son.
McCarthy said Republicans have turned up evidence of phone calls, money transfers and other activity that "paints a picture of a culture of corruption" in Biden's family. He did not cite any evidence of misconduct by Biden himself.
The impeachment inquiry could give Republican lawmakers more power to get information from the Biden administration and other sources as they seek evidence of possible financial misconduct. They will begin their work without a vote from the full House, as was held before Trump's first impeachment in 2019. Such a vote is not required, but can add legitimacy to the effort.
It was not clear whether McCarthy had the support of enough of his narrow 222-212 majority for a vote on an inquiry to have succeeded, as just five dissenters could have blocked it. Some more moderate members had begun to voice support for the idea, including Representative Nancy Mace.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney, one of the party's more moderate voices, said he was comfortable with the move.
"The fact that the White House has been singularly silent and has coddled Hunter Biden suggests that an inquiry is not inappropriate," Romney told reporters.
Democrats blasted the inquiry as a partisan effort to shift attention from Republicans' own struggles to govern, as well as the legal woes of Trump, who faces four separate criminal indictments while running for his party's 2024 presidential nomination to face Biden.
"This impeachment is Kevin McCarthy’s shiny new object to distract the public from the fact that the GOP can’t even pass bills to fund the government," Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal said.
Several hardline Republicans have said they will not vote for spending bills to keep the government funded without an impeachment inquiry. If Congress does not pass those spending bills by the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, large swaths of the US government would have to shut down.
Any effort to remove Biden from office would be unlikely to succeed. Even if the House votes to impeach Biden - an uncertain prospect, given the Republican party's narrow majority - it would almost certainly fail in a subsequent trial in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to convict.
Trump is the only US president to have been impeached twice. In 2019, the House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations.
In 2021, the House impeached Trump on a charge of inciting an insurrection following the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
He was acquitted both times in the Senate. Trump denied wrongdoing and portrayed both efforts as a political "witch hunt." He has pressed Republicans to impeach Biden.
Aside from Trump, only two other presidents have been impeached: Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 as he faced an impeachment vote.
"The bar for impeachment seems to get lower and lower every year," said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Public opinion polling has shown many Americans believe Hunter Biden has received special treatment. An August Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 49 percent of respondents said it was "believable" that Hunter Biden's legal problems were independent of his father's service as president.
Reuters
