Title: McCarthy Reversal on Impeachment Inquiry Reflects Pressure From the Right
Lede: The speaker, who formerly argued that the House must vote before opening an impeachment inquiry, changed his tune this week, a decision that could have consequences for the investigation.
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 13, 2023
Text: When Democrats declared in 2019 that they were moving ahead with an impeachment inquiry into President Donald
J. Trump without a House vote, Representative Kevin McCarthy, then the minority leader, railed against the move.
“Speaker Pelosi can’t decide on impeachment unilaterally. It requires a full vote of the House of Representatives,” he
wrote on Twitter.
The California Republican, now speaker himself, reiterated that point of view just days ago, telling the conservative
news outlet Breitbart that if Republicans were to move forward with an impeachment inquiry against President
Biden, it would be by a vote — “not through a declaration by one person.”
But this week, Mr. McCarthy made just such a declaration, directing three committees to begin an impeachment
inquiry without approval by the full House.
Mr. McCarthy’s decision reflected the substantial political pressure he is facing from right-wing members of Congress
who have demanded that he move forward quickly and aggressively with an impeachment inquiry and deep
spending cuts or risk a government shutdown, and who have threatened to depose him if he fails to do their bidding.
It also reflected his awareness that he currently lacks the votes among his fellow Republicans to approve an
impeachment inquiry, because more centrist members of the party have expressed discomfort about moving forward
in the absence of solid evidence against Mr. Biden.
As a justification, the speaker has pointed to the actions of Ms. Pelosi — who announced a formal impeachment
inquiry against Mr. Trump in 2019 five weeks before the House voted to authorize one — as setting a precedent that
he is following.
At the Capitol on Wednesday, he said he wasn’t bothered by contradicting his previous stance. “Nancy Pelosi changed
the rules and the precedent,” he said.
And he declined to answer questions about what had changed since 11 days ago, when he told Breitbart News: “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.”
There are no binding rules about what the House must do to begin an impeachment inquiry, and history offers no
clear guide. The House Judiciary Committee began an impeachment investigation into President Richard M. Nixon in
October 1973, but did not vote to ratify a formal inquiry until February 1974. In 1998, the House voted to open an
impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton. In 2021, the House impeached Mr. Trump a second time with no
inquiry at all.
But pursuing an impeachment inquiry without a vote of the full House creates a scenario in which some targets of
subpoenas could put forth legal arguments to resist complying. A 2020 Justice Department memo written during the
Trump administration argued that an impeachment inquiry was invalid without a vote of the House. It is not yet clear
whether the Biden White House will make a similar argument.
McCarthy Reversal on Impeachment Inquiry Reflects Pressure From
the Right
“Speaker McCarthy’s announcement of an impeachment inquiry by relevant committees raises interesting questions
about authority to issue and enforce subpoenas in pursuance of the inquiry,” said Stanley Brand, the former House
general counsel. “It is clear that authority to issue subpoenas comes from the full House, and with respect to
impeachment, that requires authority from the House.”
Regardless of the legal issues, Democrats were quick to condemn the about-face by Mr. McCarthy.
“The hypocrisy almost takes your breath away. Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly said you cannot start an
impeachment inquiry without a full vote of the House,” said Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota,
noting that Mr. McCarthy had gone so far as to introduce a resolution in 2019 that condemned an impeachment
inquiry without a House vote as an “abuse of power” that “brings discredit to the House.”
“Yet that is exactly what Kevin McCarthy is doing today,” she added. “Why? Because he knows impeachment is too
extreme to pass the House — even with the Republican majority.”
In 2019, Mr. McCarthy’s resolution railed against what he called Ms. Pelosi’s “extraordinary decision to move forward
with an impeachment inquiry without any debate or vote,” and argued that such an action “undermines the voting
privileges afforded to each member and the constituents they represent.”
All that appeared to have changed by Tuesday.
In many regards, the announcement of an impeachment inquiry has less to do with the investigatory powers of
Congress and more to do with the politics that take place under the Capitol Dome. Three House committees are
already investigating the Biden family and the president’s administration, and the impeachment inquiry is mostly a
rebranding exercise and an extension of those existing efforts.
The committees have been successful in obtaining a wide array of documents and hauling in dozens of witnesses
without the need to fight protracted litigation. The Oversight Committee, led by Representative James R. Comer,
Republican of Kentucky, has already received more than 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, reviewed more
than 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports and spent hours interviewing witnesses, including two of Hunter
Biden’s former business associates.
But Mr. McCarthy argued he needed a greater justification to issue subpoenas for the bank records of a president and
his family.
“An impeachment inquiry is simply empowering the House to a greater level to get the documents,” he told reporters,
adding: “We don’t have the president’s bank statements. We don’t have Hunter Biden’s bank statements.”
Title: Trump Has Been Privately Encouraging G.O.P. Lawmakers to Impeach Biden
Lede: The former president has talked regularly with members of the House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment.
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 13, 2023
Text: On a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., former President Donald J. Trump dined Sunday night with a
close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman. But over halibut and Diet Cokes, Ms. Greene brought
up an issue of considerable interest to Mr. Trump — the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year’s election.
“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Ms. Greene said in a brief phone interview.
Mr. Trump’s dinner with Ms. Greene came just two nights before Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced his decision on Tuesday to order the opening of an
impeachment inquiry into President Biden, under intense pressure from his right flank.
Over the past several months, Mr. Trump has kept a close watch on House Republicans’ momentum toward impeaching Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has talked
regularly by phone with members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus and other congressional Republicans who pushed for impeachment,
according to a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to publicly discuss the conversations. Mr. Trump has encouraged the effort both
privately and publicly.
Ms. Greene, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, said she told Mr. Trump that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be
“long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”
She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were
co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr. Trump would win back the White House in 2024 and that she wanted “to
go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”
While Mr. Biden’s son Hunter is under investigation by a special counsel who is expected to lodge a gun charge against him soon and could also charge
him with failure to file his tax returns on time, Republicans have not shown that Mr. Biden committed any crimes. House Republicans are proceeding
with the impeachment inquiry without proof that Mr. Biden took official actions as vice president to benefit his son’s financial interests or that he directly
profited from his son’s foreign deals.
Mr. Trump has also spoken weekly over the past month to Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the third-ranking House Republican, according to a
person familiar with the conversations who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. During those conversations, Ms. Stefanik also briefed Mr. Trump
on the impeachment inquiry strategy, this person said.
The former president thanked Ms. Stefanik for publicly backing the impeachment inquiry in July, the person added. Ms. Stefanik, who talked to Mr.
Trump again on Tuesday after Mr. McCarthy ordered the impeachment inquiry, had been the first member of House Republican leadership to publicly call
for taking the first step in the process of impeaching Mr. Biden.
A person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said that despite his eagerness to see an inquiry move forward, the former president has not been twisting
Mr. McCarthy’s arm. Mr. Trump has been far more aggressive in pushing several members to wipe his own impeachment record clean, the person said,
potentially by getting Congress to take the unprecedented step of expunging his two impeachments from the House record.
Mr. Trump has not been expressing concern about the possibility that the McCarthy impeachment effort might backfire and benefit Mr. Biden, according
to two people with direct knowledge of his private statements over several months. Instead, he wondered to an ally why there had been no movement on
impeaching Mr. Biden once he learned that the House was back in session.
A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy did not respond to a question about his interactions with the former president regarding impeachment.
When asked for comment, Mr. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, pointed to Mr. Trump’s public statements about impeaching Mr. Biden.
The former president’s public commentary on the possibility of a Biden impeachment has escalated from wistful musings about the Justice Department’s
supposed inaction to explicit demands.
“They persecuted us and yet Joe Biden is a stone-cold criminal, caught dead to right, and nothing happens to him. Forget the family. Nothing happens to
him,” the former president said at a rally in March.
In a June town hall with the Fox News host Sean Hannity, Mr. Trump lamented what happened after authorities found boxes of classified documents in
both Mar-a-Lago and the Bidens’ Delaware residence.
“It is a dual system of government,” Mr. Trump said. “You talk about law and order. You can’t have law and order in a country where you have such
corruption.”
That same month, after Mr. Trump was arraigned on charges that he had improperly retained sensitive national security documents and obstructed
investigators, he declared that if re-elected he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Mr. Biden and his family.
By July, Mr. Trump had begun suggesting that Republicans should impeach the president, and as the summer wore on, he conveyed his desire with
greater urgency.
“So, they impeach me over a ‘perfect’ phone call, and they don’t impeach Biden for being the most corrupt president in the history of the United
States???” Mr. Trump wrote in all caps on his website, Truth Social.
In yet another nearly all-cap Truth Social post in late August, the former president wrote, referring to congressional Republicans: “Either impeach the
bum, or fade into oblivion. They did it to us!”
Title: Biden Impeachment Inquiry: What to Know About the GOP’s Case
Lede: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launches a probe that might lead to impeachment proceedings against President Biden
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: September 15, 2023
Text: On Sept. 12 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would formally open an
impeachment inquiry into President Biden, citing allegations against the
president and his family that “paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”
McCarthy (R., Calif.) unveiled the inquiry amid intense pressure from hard-right
members of the GOP, some of whom have threatened to oust him from his
leadership post. Here are some things to know to put the inquiry in historical and
political context.
What is impeachment?
Impeachment is the process laid out in the Constitution for removing a federal
official from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” requiring an
impeachment vote in the House and then conviction by the Senate. Three
presidents have been impeached by the House in the nation’s history: Andrew
Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. All
were acquitted in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to convict.
What does an impeachment inquiry mean?
It is the formal process of determining whether there are grounds for
impeachment that comes before any impeachment vote. McCarthy said he would
task the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees with
spearheading an investigation focused on finding evidence of financial
wrongdoing and corruption. Republican lawmakers have already been pursuing
such evidence, but beginning a formal impeachment inquiry frees them from
having to justify their investigative steps as having a legislative purpose. They
will now have broader powers to seek documents and testimony as they
investigate the Biden family’s finances, in the hope of bringing one or more
articles of impeachment against the president.
What have those House committees been focusing on so far?
The House Judiciary Committee has been investigating what Republicans
portray as the weaponization of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau
of Investigation under the Biden administration. Meanwhile, the House
Oversight Committee has been focused on the financial dealings of the president
and his family, notably his son Hunter Biden, who was indicted Sept. 14 on
firearms charges. Republicans have been looking into whether the Democratic
president played a role in or benefited from Hunter Biden’s business deals.
Former business partner Devon Archer testified that Joe Biden was put on the
phone to help Hunter Biden sell what he called “the brand” and that Hunter
Biden was offering business associates the “illusion of access” to Joe Biden. No
evidence has emerged to show that the president benefited from Hunter Biden’s
endeavors or that he wielded government authority to favor them.
Compared with past impeachment inquiries, the one announced by McCarthy
was extraordinary in the dearth of evidence that precipitated it, said Frank
Bowman, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law and
an expert on impeachment.
“In every one of those past cases, before the House took any action, including
initiating a formal inquiry or investigation, substantial evidence of presidential
wrongdoing had already emerged,” he said. “At this point, what Republicans
have is bupkis, nothing, zero.”
How does Hunter Biden figure in the GOP probes?
He plays a central role. House Republicans have homed in on the Justice
Department’s five-year investigation focusing on his foreign business dealings
and taxes, which could figure in future charges against him. In June, the younger
Biden agreed to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges, in a deal that
would have allowed him to avoid prosecution on a separate charge related to his
2018 purchase of a firearm while using illegal drugs. But the plea deal fell apart
in July under a judge’s questioning, exposing differences in how Biden’s defense
team and federal prosecutors interpreted the agreement. Since then, the former
U.S. attorney leading the probe, David Weiss, has been made special counsel and
indicted Hunter Biden.
What evidence do Republicans have that Hunter Biden got preferential
treatment from the Justice Department?
In closed-door and public testimony, two Internal Revenue Service agents have
alleged that Justice Department officials slow-walked and stymied the
investigation into the president’s son. IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley said
Justice Department officials blocked Weiss’s efforts to bring charges against
Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., and in California.
Rebutting that claim, Weiss said he had broad latitude to pursue charges and
had “never been denied the authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction.” And
in closed-door testimony in early September, a senior FBI agent, Thomas
Sobocinski, disputed the IRS agents’ claims that Weiss’s probe was stymied.
What evidence has turned up of corruption or malfeasance by President
Biden?
Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said
his panel has uncovered evidence that the Biden family engaged in a pattern of
influence-peddling and corruption. But the committee hasn’t found evidence of a
specific corrupt action President Biden took in connection with his son’s
business dealings, or that he personally profited from them.
White House spokesman Ian Sams described the launch of the impeachment
inquiry as “extreme politics at its worst” and said that GOP investigations have
“turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.”
The House investigation has brought renewed attention to Hunter Biden’s highly
paid tenure on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma, during his father’s
vice presidency. It has also returned a spotlight to unflattering details about
Hunter Biden’s business dealings abroad, including one episode in which he
accepted a 2.8-carat diamond—estimated to be valued at up to $80,000—from a
Chinese businessman.
Is there any chance an inquiry doesn’t lead to an impeachment
proceeding?
The point of the impeachment inquiry, McCarthy has said, is to give Republicans
maximum power to investigate the president. But he hasn’t said whether the
inquiry will definitely end up with an impeachment vote. Passage of articles of
impeachment requires a simple majority of the House, where the Republicans
have a slim edge. But some GOP lawmakers have expressed skepticism over
impeaching Biden on the evidence currently at hand, and the party risks
embarrassment if, having held an inquiry, it balks at actually voting on
impeachment—or if a vote is held and it fails.
Impeachment probes of Clinton and Trump culminated in successful
impeachment votes and then acquittals in the Senate. The impeachment probe of
Republican Richard Nixon ended without a vote when Nixon resigned amid likely
removal from office.
Title: Biden circle fires back hard at impeachment inquiry
Lede: President Biden has sought to remain above the fray, but his staffers — and son — are responding aggressively
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: September 15, 2013
Text: In the three days since House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, White House representatives have
slammed the probe as “extreme politics at its worst,” dismissed it as “illegitimate” in cable news appearances and blasted out a 14-page rebuttal.
Biden’s broader circle has joined the aggressive pushback. His reelection campaign fired off a fundraising email Wednesday castigating the inquiry as “theater with
bad actors.” His son Hunter, who is at the center of Republicans’ impeachment push, on Wednesday sued a hard-right activist who has been investigating him and
providing information to Congress.
This flurry of reactions comes as the president’s allies say Biden himself plans to remain above the fray and focus on touting his economic record and leading the
country. At a meeting of health-care advisers on Wednesday, Biden ignored reporters’ shouted questions about impeachment, and he made no remarks about the
inquiry during an economic speech Thursday.
The dynamic suggests a two-tiered strategy as Republicans begin pursuing an impeachment inquiry that still includes few details: Biden will suggest that the
impeachment investigation is political gamesmanship not worthy of his attention, while his associates and allies engage the Republicans in bitter hand-to-hand
combat.
Joel Benenson, a Democratic strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, said it makes sense for Biden’s proxies to
handle the hard-hitting tactics while Biden avoids becoming distracted by the inquiry if he can. The White House, Benenson said, should aggressively criticize
Republicans for attempting to divert attention from the four criminal cases against former president Donald Trump.
“I think the Republicans are stepping in a swamp here,” Benenson said. “And I think they’re going to get very muddy trying to swim out of it.”
Most Republicans disagree, at least publicly. McCarthy has said the impeachment inquiry will focus on whether the president benefited from his son’s business
dealings, among other issues, and GOP leaders say many Americans have genuine questions about that. “We will go wherever the evidence takes us,” McCarthy told
reporters.
Biden did address the inquiry — briefly — at a campaign fundraiser in McLean, Va., on Wednesday evening, brushing it off as intertwined with Republican threats to
shut down the government. Some of McCarthy’s most conservative members, whose votes he needs to approve spending bills, are among those pressing hardest for
impeachment. If Congress can’t agree on spending, the government will shut down.
The president said he is focused on other things than the inquiry. “I’ve got a job to do,” Biden said. “Everybody always asks about impeachment. I get up every day —
not a joke — not focused on impeachment.”
Biden recently returned from a trip to India and Vietnam, where he sought to bolster the global coalition against Russia’s war in Ukraine and strengthen America’s
alliances confronting China. He said Thursday he plans to deliver a major address on democracy in coming weeks.
The president’s aides hope such activities convey that Biden is engaged in issues of significance to the country while his adversaries are tied up in pursuing vague
allegations against his son. Even as they announced their impeachment inquiry this week, House Republicans struggled to pass the basic funding bills needed to keep
the government open.
Democrats argue that voters will be impatient with what they will see as unwarranted political drama in Washington. They cite the Republicans’ impeachment of
President Bill Clinton in 1998, which led to a spike in Clinton’s popularity and set the stage for Republican losses in that year’s midterms.
And they are trying especially hard to tie the impeachment inquiry to Trump, who has encouraged the move and is unpopular with many swing voters. A Biden-Harris
2024 campaign spokesman accused McCarthy of acting as an arm of Trump’s campaign and said Republicans are litigating “the same debunked conspiracy theories
they’ve investigated for over four years.”
“As Donald Trump ramped up his demands for a baseless impeachment inquiry, Kevin McCarthy cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by
turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign,” Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement. He pointed to some
congressional Republicans who have said they have seen no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
The Biden campaign also sent out an impeachment-focused fundraising email, signed by Vice President Harris, that raised the most money of any email sent in her
name this campaign cycle, according to a person familiar with campaign strategy who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal metrics.
The person said the Biden team would continue to adhere to a message that Biden is focused on the economy while the inquiry is a “ploy by Republicans to attack the
president and hurt him politically and help out Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.” But they acknowledged that the inquiry is likely to be difficult for Democrats
and the White House.
“I don’t think there’s a Democrat out there who is rooting for impeachment to happen,” the person said. “I don’t think impeachment is going to be a particularly
pleasant experience, and I think everybody is pretty clear-eyed about that.”
Democrats have at times struggled to explain Hunter Biden’s activities, including his tenure on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma at a time when
his father was Obama’s point man on Ukraine. They stress that there is no evidence that any of those activities violated the law, however.
More relevant to the impeachment effort, House Republicans have not released evidence indicating that President Biden benefited from his son’s business dealings,
although they have accused the Justice Department of interfering with an investigation into Hunter Biden’s activities. But so far, they have said little about how the
impeachment inquiry will be different from their current investigations of the president’s son.
“Republicans in Congress, right, they have spent all year investigating the president,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday.
“That’s what they’ve spent all year doing and have turned up with no evidence — none — he that he did anything wrong.”
Hunter Biden’s activities are potentially among the most politically volatile issues that Biden faces as he pursues four more years in office. The younger Biden has
stayed close to his father in recent months as he reached a tentative plea deal in a federal tax and gun crimes case — and then saw that agreement collapse. Hunter
Biden was indicted Thursday for allegedly making false statements and illegally possessing a gun, paving the way for a possible trial.
Hunter Biden, whose lawyers have at times taken a notably aggressive approach, sued one of his chief antagonists, former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler, on Wednesday,
calling him “a zealot who has waged a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign against [Hunter Biden] and the entire Biden family for more than two years.”
The lawsuit alleges that Ziegler, who compiles personal and financial records from Hunter Biden and posts them online, violated computer privacy laws, allegations
that Ziegler has forcefully denied.
Also on Wednesday, an attorney for Hunter Biden wrote to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanding that he retract his
claim on Newsmax that he never received bank records that he requested from Hunter Biden. “For you to now go on live television and say we did not respond or
ignored your Committee’s requests is simply not true,” Abbe Lowell wrote.
In response, a spokesman for the Oversight Committee reasserted that the records were withheld. “Hunter Biden has not provided these documents and
communications,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Hunter Biden’s legal team is splitting hairs because they have no defense for the Bidens’ corruption other than
to try to distract from the facts.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams, who was brought into the White House last year in part to respond to GOP congressional investigations, has been among the
president’s most vociferous defenders. In an initial statement, he called the impeachment inquiry an “evidence-free goose chase.” Then he hit the cable news circuit to
hammer home the message.
In an MSNBC appearance Tuesday, Sams listed House Republicans who had expressed uncertainty about the need for a probe, including Reps. David Joyce (Ohio),
Don Bacon (Neb.) and Dusty Johnson (S.D.).
“This isn’t based on anything substantive,” Sams said. “It’s based on the fact that [McCarthy] is being attacked from his right and he’s throwing them red meat.”
The next morning, the White House blasted out a link to a news story featuring impeachment experts calling Republicans’ case weak. Biden aides also sent a memo to
news organizations arguing that coverage of the impeachment inquiry should emphasize “the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all
their actions.”
At the top, in red capital letters, the memo declared, “HOUSE REPUBLICANS ARE BASING THEIR BIDEN IMPEACHMENT STUNT ON FALSE CLAIMS THAT
HAVE BEEN REPEATEDLY DEBUNKED.”
Title: Trump keeps distance from impeachment inquiry while assailing Biden
Lede: The former president has shown more interest in lobbying to expunge his own impeachments
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: September 16, 2023
Text: Former president Donald Trump often shows more interest in expunging his impeachments than impeaching President Biden. Advisers say he isn’t the driving force
behind the Biden impeachment inquiry on Capitol Hill. And he has at times been muted about the actions of House GOP leaders.
The Republican polling leader in the 2024 presidential campaign has been relentless in leveling exaggerated or unsubstantiated accusations against Biden — raising
suspicions about his family’s finances that House Republicans are now pursuing with their impeachment inquiry. But Trump has so far been markedly less forceful in
advocating for impeachment — a position that reflects the tenuous standing of the House GOP strategy, even within the party.
“That’s up to them if they want to do impeachment or impeachment inquiry,” Trump said of House Republicans impeaching Biden in an interview with Megyn Kelly
that aired Thursday. “I have no idea whether they will or not, we do have a lot of other things. But it’s quite important, and they did it to me.”
The last part — Trump’s own impeachments, first for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden, and then for inciting the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6,
2021 — has occupied Trump more. He has told Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that he wants his own impeachments formally annulled, according to two people
familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. McCarthy has signaled openness to the idea
but made no commitments, one of the people said.
Seeking a return to the White House as a twice-impeached former president facing criminal charges in four cases, Trump has often focused more heavily on what he
would do to exact retribution on his political opponents if he is returned to power. On the campaign trail, he has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after”
Biden.
Trump has also privately complained more about the lack of criminal charges against Biden and his son, Hunter, than about House Republicans’ not impeaching the
president, the person said. On Thursday, special counsel David Weiss indicted Hunter Biden for allegedly making false statements and illegally possessing a handgun
after a plea deal to two misdemeanor tax violations fell apart in July.
Trump responded to the Hunter Biden charges by accusing prosecutors of going easy on him. “This, the gun charge, is the only crime that Hunter Biden committed
that does not implicate Crooked Joe Biden,” he said in a social media post. The president has denied any involvement in his son’s affairs, and no evidence has emerged
proving otherwise.
As House Republicans hoping to uncover more evidence move toward impeachment, a senior GOP aide agreed that the effort has been driven more by members of
Congress than by Trump. On Trump’s team, there is a similar perspective. “It’s not something he is on the phone with these guys about,” a Trump adviser said of the
impeachment inquiry. “He is not driving it.”
McCarthy’s calculation to use his power to trigger House committees to open an impeachment inquiry reflects the pressure from his right to act — but also the
recognition that there would not be enough votes to open an inquiry on the House floor. Trump’s relative quietude on the issue contrasts with the White House’s
efforts to portray House Republicans as doing Trump’s bidding.
“Speaker-in-name-only Kevin McCarthy opened this baseless impeachment inquiry, at the behest of Donald Trump, centered on the same, debunked lies from four
years ago in a bid to help Trump’s political campaign,” Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
Even without a full-throated demand for Biden’s impeachment, Trump has described it as getting even with Democrats for impeaching him. He has gone further to
suggest that Republicans would be justified in responding to his 91 criminal charges by concocting indictments against Democrats.
“Had they not done it to me … perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them,” Trump said in the Kelly interview. “And this is going to happen with indictments, to
fake indictments. And I think you’re going to see that as time goes by, you’re going to see Republicans when they’re in power doing it.”
Trump has in recent months dialed up accusations about Biden, drawing on right-wing media reports and House Republicans’ investigations into Hunter Biden’s
foreign business dealings. Trump goes further than the available evidence to falsely claim there is proof that Joe Biden has taken foreign bribes and that the payments
are influencing his actions as president.
Despite the lack of proof, surveys suggest many Americans suspect Biden’s entanglement. In a CNN poll conducted by SSRS released last week, 61 percent of
Americans said they believe Joe Biden was involved in Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine and China while the elder Biden was vice president. The survey
also showed a majority (55 percent) said Joe Biden has acted inappropriately when it comes to the investigation into his son. Views diverged along party lines.
Stopping short of demanding an impeachment inquiry, Trump in July called on House Republicans to withhold military aid for Ukraine to pressure the
administration to cooperate with investigations into the Bidens. In an August social media post, he suggested an impeachment inquiry would be “well meaning” but
too slow. “You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it,” Trump wrote at the time, along with unproven allegations about Biden, calling on Republicans to either
impeach him or “fade into OBLIVION.”
“He’s a candidate running for president, he’s not running the House of Representatives with an impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has
been agitating for impeachment for months, told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday. “One of the things I love about President Trump is he always tells us what he
thinks. … I’m sure he’ll give his opinion.”
Trump has been in touch with House Republicans such as Greene and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. But he has not been actively lobbying lawmakers about
impeachment. He spent Thursday playing golf at his club in New Jersey.
Trump has continued to needle McCarthy for saying immediately after Jan. 6 that Trump deserved to be censured — “the c word,” as Trump calls it privately,
according to another adviser. The adviser said Trump runs “hot and cold” and became apoplectic earlier this year when McCarthy suggested in a television interview
that Trump might not be the strongest Republican nominee for 2024. McCarthy quickly backtracked from his comments.
Title: Kevin McCarthy turns impeachment into political score-settling
Lede: The House speaker directed an impeachment inquiry into President Biden based on “allegations,” making the process a debasement of what was intended to be a constitutional vehicle to remove a president for malfeasance
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: September 16, 2023
Text: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the reasons he decided to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden were “allegations” involving Hunter
Biden’s business dealings that suggest “a culture of corruption” by the Biden family. He provided nothing close to a smoking gun involving the president to back up
that claim.
His statement, solemnly delivered this past week as if it were a moment of high consequence for the republic, recalled a comment attributed to Rudy Giuliani, who
after the 2020 election incessantly made wild, false claims about election fraud in his representation of then-President Donald Trump.
“We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence,” Giuliani said, according to then-Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), who testified before the House
select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Impeachment proceedings were not meant to start with theories. In a world turned upside down, that’s what McCarthy has done. The real reason for McCarthy’s
decision to launch the inquiry was apparent to all. It was a bow to hard-right members of his conference demanding he do this at a time when the speaker is caught up
in internal brawling with those members over funding the government by the Sept. 30 deadline.
Some of those members have threatened to try to remove McCarthy as speaker; his hold on the gavel has been tenuous since he barely secured it back in January on
the 15th ballot. In pungent language, he told them at a closed-door meeting to bring it on. This is the climate that has led to the invocation of one of the most serious
and, until recently, rarely used mechanisms in the Constitution for disciplining a president.
Divisions among House Republicans over spending could lead eventually to a government shutdown that risks political damage to the Republican Party heading into
the 2024 elections. The impeachment inquiry, if it gets out of hand or sputters inconclusively, could do the same or worse, especially for the 18 House Republicans
who sit in districts Biden won in 2020. Given their narrow majority, House Republicans can ill afford to make things difficult for their most vulnerable members.
By definition, the impeachment process is a political exercise with legal aspects. With this latest turn, it is now almost wholly political, a debasement of what was
intended to be a vehicle to remove a president for malfeasance even in the absence of criminal charges. As Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said in an interview this past
week: “This is not an impeachment. This is an inquiry, and I have heard no allegations that rise to the high-crimes-and-misdemeanors standard of the Constitution.”
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, a voice for traditional rather than Trumpian conservatism and one that has been persistently critical of Biden with regard to
his son’s business dealings, offered a warning to House Republicans.
“Congress is in danger of turning the serious sanction of impeachment into the new censure — a statement of rebuke rather than a threat of removal,” the editorial
read. “Republicans will need evidence of genuine corruption by Mr. Biden if they want to convince a majority of Americans that he should be removed from office with
an election coming in 2024.”
The same editorial was critical of the first of Trump’s two impeachments, saying the Ukraine inquiry was based on “flimsy evidence to appease progressives.” The
outcome of that impeachment was a near-party-line vote in the Senate to acquit Trump. (Romney was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to convict.)
Yet that impeachment began with more than McCarthy has at this moment. There was confirmation of a phone call between the president and Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump, who at the time was withholding aid to that country, pressed Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden that could be used against the
Democrat in the 2020 election.
Other impeachments also were launched with more substance than McCarthy has now. The Watergate scandal, a vast conspiracy of lawlessness by many, brought
Richard M. Nixon to the brink of impeachment, which he avoided only by resigning the presidency. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying in a deposition about an
affair with a White House intern. Democrats, while not defending Clinton’s behavior, thought impeachment was not the proper recourse, and the proceedings ended
in party-line votes for acquittal. Trump’s second impeachment came in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack and his role in inciting the mob. Romney and six other
Republicans joined the Democrats in the Senate to convict, but still that fell short of the threshold needed.
McCarthy had said earlier that he would not open an impeachment inquiry without a vote by the House. He went back on his word, instead issuing a unilateral order
to start the proceedings — an apparent acknowledgment that he lacked the votes to do so on the House floor and an indication that this came because of political
pressure rather than a preponderance of evidence.
As pursued by House Republicans, impeachment is now more score-settling than serious undertaking, a tit-for-tat in retaliation for the four criminal indictments of
Trump this year and claims of a weaponized Justice Department. This could spiral into a steady stream of impeachments in future years as control of the White House
and Congress changes hands.
House committees have been investigating Hunter Biden and others in the Biden family for a long time. Why this now? McCarthy said that, by opening an
impeachment inquiry, investigators would have better tools to gain access to information that could help to prove what Republicans hope to prove, that the president
personally profited from his son’s contracts with foreign entities.
Yet, as The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany reported, it is not clear what those additional tools are or why the label of “impeachment inquiry” will suddenly
reveal hoped-for evidence that months of investigative work by these committees has yet to produce. Many Republicans see enough smoke in what is known so far to
believe there must be fire regarding the president. As yet, that’s not the case.
Hunter Biden also has been under investigation for years by the Justice Department. He was indicted Thursday on gun charges after a plea agreement with
prosecutors broke down during the summer. The federal investigation, led by special counsel David Weiss, could also result in an indictment of the president’s son on
tax charges. Nothing made public from the Justice Department’s probe has shown that the president did anything illegal.
So far it’s known that Biden, when he was vice president, was on phone calls with his son and his son’s business associates, that he showed up at two dinners with
similar attendees. Devon Archer, a business partner of Hunter’s, has testified before Congress that all of this helped to promote the family brand, but he also said
Biden did not discuss business in any of those settings. Republicans also are suspicious because Biden uses several pseudonyms in emails.
Archer’s testimony shows that Hunter Biden was trading on his father’s position and suggesting to potential clients that he had influence with his father beyond what
he had. Biden’s judgment in dealing even in passing with his son’s business associates, a son who was in turn dealing with drug addiction at the time, can be called
into question. But Republicans have not delivered on their ultimate claim, after months of trying, that Biden profited financially or that U.S. policy was changed as a
result.
Trump is facing 91 felony counts in four criminal indictments. He wants nothing more than to muddy the waters in the minds of voters, hoping to persuade people
that he is no worse than Biden. There is no equivalence between the charges against Trump (and the powerful evidence in the indictments) and the claims about
Biden, though anyone who watches Fox News might believe otherwise.
Some Republicans in the House are nervous about what McCarthy has begun. A few have been outspoken, none perhaps more than Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), who wrote
in a Post op-ed that his colleagues pursuing impeachment “are relying on an imagined history” when the process “should have a foundation of rock-solid facts.”
Now that the inquiry is launched, it could take on a life of its own, in which case it might be difficult to stop before articles of impeachment are introduced. Or the
inquiry could run for months without any conclusion, never rising to a formal impeachment proceeding but without anyone calling a halt to it.
McCarthy has claimed the impeachment inquiry is a “natural step” after the work that has been done, but there is nothing natural about this one. It is a political step,
one taken under the speaker’s duress. The burden of proof remains with McCarthy and his Republican colleagues.