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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday directed House committees to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, a unilateral decision that appeared designed to appease hard-right lawmakers eager to intensify investigations of the president amid his reelection campaign.
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The inquiry will center on whether Biden benefited from his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings, among other issues, McCarthy (R-Calif.) said.
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption, and warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday morning. “That’s why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. … We will go wherever the evidence takes us.”
House Republicans have not put forth evidence directly showing that Biden benefited from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine and elsewhere. They have aired allegations that the Justice Department stymied an investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings along with testimony about his penchant for touting the family brand to attract clients.
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McCarthy accused Biden of lying “to the American people about knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings,” specifically saying that then-Vice President Joe Biden had interacted with Hunter as he was using his family name while working to secure foreign business deals. While staunch far-right Republicans have claimed that is enough to impeach Biden, many conservative lawmakers in the conference say they have yet to see a direct link that reaches the threshold of the high crimes and misdemeanors that are among impeachable offenses.
When asked Tuesday afternoon if he thought Biden had committed impeachable offenses, McCarthy repeatedly emphasized that this was simply continuing existing investigations that he said gives the House more leverage to subpoena White House officials.
“An impeachment inquiry is the ability to get the information to answer the questions. That’s all we’re doing. Americans need answers,” McCarthy told reporters.
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McCarthy said the impeachment inquiry will be led by House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) in coordination with Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason T. Smith (R-Mo.).
White House spokesman Ian Sams blasted McCarthy’s move as “extreme politics at its worst.”
“The President hasn’t done anything wrong, and the House Republicans’ investigations for the past 9 months have proved that,” he said in a statement. “They have no evidence, so they’re launching the next phase of their evidence-free goose chase simply to throw red meat to the right wing so they can continue baselessly attacking the president to play extreme politics.”
A spokesman for Biden’s reelection campaign also slammed the impeachment inquiry as a “political stunt.”
House lawmakers return to looming budget and impeachment decisions
House Republican leaders remain in a tenuous position as they balance the myriad demands by conservatives to significantly curtail spending and fund the government by the end of the month without input from Democrats. McCarthy in particular is being targeted by several far-right lawmakers who have publicly stated that he must abide by promises to members of the House Freedom Caucus in exchange for supporting him for speaker in January. The House faces a critical Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government and avoid a shutdown.
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Members of the House Freedom Caucus and other far-right lawmakers have begun to speculate on how McCarthy would need to lead during the upcoming fiscal fight if he wanted to prevent his ouster from the speaker’s seat. Several have warned that such a vote, known as a motion to vacate, could be triggered if McCarthy relies on Democratic votes, rather than Republicans’, to avert a government shutdown.
“I think Speaker McCarthy has a path to choose. Does he pass Republican legislation that advances our policies and cuts spending with Republican majority or does he pass legislation with Democrat votes that lets down the American people,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said.
Dangling an impeachment inquiry vote was meant to address the demands of some far-right lawmakers, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who wanted to ramp up investigations into Biden in exchange for their vote on a short-term funding bill that would avert a government shutdown.
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But McCarthy’s calculation on how to launch an impeachment inquiry changed after his leadership team surveyed the conference over the past week and recognized that there would not be enough votes to open an inquiry on the House floor, according to multiple Republican lawmakers and aides familiar with the conservations, who like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
While many conservatives have concerns over whether evidence exists to eventually consider impeaching Biden, lawmakers largely agree that the House majority has a responsibility to thoroughly provide oversight over the White House. An impeachment inquiry, Republicans say, only helps them investigate further.
McCarthy’s allies on Monday told a small group of lawmakers, including those tasked with continuing to investigate the Biden administration, about his intentions to unilaterally launch an inquiry on Congress’s return Tuesday. Still, many lawmakers were surprised, though not irritated, lawmakers and aides said, by the announcement.
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Moderate Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), who chairs the Republican Governance Group, in a statement voiced his support for McCarthy’s decision to allow current investigators to expand their scope and produce their findings which he said he will “carefully review.”
People familiar with McCarthy’s thinking said unilaterally launching an inquiry also helped shield vulnerable Republican incumbents, particularly those representing districts that voted for Biden, from being put on the record on impeachment this early in the process. However, some Republican lawmakers and aides warned that far-right lawmakers could eventually demand an impeachment inquiry vote for political purposes.
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“I think they should put it on the floor, personally, I do. But either way, it’s important we get to it,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a member of the Freedom Caucus.
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Trump talked to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) about the inquiry after McCarthy’s announcement, according to a Trump aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the conversation.
McCarthy had previously said he would not open an impeachment inquiry without a full House vote, most recently telling the conservative outlet Breitbart News early this month that House Republicans would not launch an inquiry to “use it for political purposes.”
“The American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their elected representatives,” McCarthy said then. “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.”
Pressed on the about-face, McCarthy repeatedly cited former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for establishing precedent after she launched an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote in 2019 into President Donald Trump.
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Yet a day after Pelosi unilaterally launched that impeachment inquiry, McCarthy, the minority leader, drafted a resolution condemning Pelosi for her actions, pointing out that no inquiry had previously started by “a unilateral decree of the Speaker” and arguing that it robs all lawmakers from voicing their opinions on the matter.
Congressional Democrats called McCarthy’s move baseless.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the inquiry was “absurd,” while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) vowed to put together a robust defense plan to rebut the allegations.
“We will defend President Biden until the very end,” he said at a Tuesday news conference after calling Biden a patriot and a “good man.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that evidence produced by House Republicans about President Biden has “not even begun to approach the high bar of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
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“And they have done none of the work necessary to convince the American people that this stunt is a good idea — a political reality that I suspect will set in for them sooner, rather than later,” he said.
How a Biden impeachment probe compares to Nixon, Clinton and Trump
But McCarthy’s decision was not enough to appease Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of several hard-right holdouts who was determined to deny McCarthy the speaker’s gavel in January. In terse comments on the House floor Tuesday, Gaetz dismissed McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement as a “baby step” that was not genuine, and accused the GOP leader of serving as a “valet” for Biden’s spending agenda.
Gaetz told McCarthy he was “out of compliance with the agreement” that had allowed him to assume his leadership role, and threatened to have McCarthy ousted as speaker.
“The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you forward to immediate and total compliance or remove you,” Gaetz said, speaking of McCarthy. “If we have to start the day with the prayer, pledge and the motion to vacate, so be it.”
Members of the Freedom Caucus and other far-right lawmakers spent Tuesday publicly reiterating that they view McCarthy’s decision to launch an impeachment inquiry as separate to earning their support on funding the government and averting a shutdown.
In an effort to fulfill the Freedom Caucuses’ demand to pass all 12 individual appropriations bills and fund the government for the full fiscal year, Republican leaders know they must pass a short-term funding bill that extends current government spending levels. But the Freedom Caucus has said they need to see border security, curtailed spending on the Justice Department and FBI, as well as measures limiting the “woke policies” at the Pentagon, included.
These lawmakers see curtailing funding and decreasing the debt significantly as an existential threat to America that is much more consequential than prioritizing keeping the House majority for Republicans.
“My question for my colleagues, particularly my Republican colleagues, is when is it enough? When is it enough to stand up and do what you campaigned to do and use the power of the purse to stop this administration from trampling the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) said.
Even though the Freedom Caucus wants to pass as many funding bills as possible, they are preparing to prevent that from happening as soon as Wednesday, potentially blocking a procedural hurdle that allows consideration of a bill funding the Defense Department. They say they have yet to receive a number of demands from leadership regarding the remaining appropriations process, requiring the move.
If those demands aren’t met, and Republicans can’t agree to approve a series of appropriations bills, some in the group are calling for an immediate shutdown to exert more pressure on leadership to cave on their demands.
“It’s time to fight. If it shuts the government down, shut it down,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said.
Mariana Alfaro, Theodoric Meyer, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Jacqueline Alemany, Marisa Iati and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
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