No evidence? No problem!
The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.
The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.
The Republican majority that voted for the Biden impeachment inquiry includes all four New York Republicans who picked up seats in the 2022 midterms: Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro.
Brooklyn/Staten Island Congress Member Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican member of the New York City Congressional delegation, also voted for the impeachment inquiry. She had previously voted in January 2021 to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Biden won — and voted against Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.
The 3rd District was not represented in the vote, since the former rep, George Santos, had been expelled from office in December after he was indicted twice for alleged fraud.
“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome,” Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team claimed in a joint statement after the vote. “But the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore.”
Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House, including once for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.
The decision to hold a vote came as Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.
Ahead of the vote, Johnson called it “the next necessary step” and acknowledged there are “a lot of people who are frustrated this hasn’t moved faster.“
In a recent statement, the White House called the whole process a “baseless fishing expedition” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.”
House Democrats rose in opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday.
“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Manhattan Congress Member Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”
Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the president and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove 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-ranking 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 taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.
Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has 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 conceded 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 did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever 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 be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president’s son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs.
