U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy delivers a statement on allegations surrounding U.S. President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as the House of Representatives returns from its summer break facing a looming deadline to avoid a government shutdown while spending talks continue on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. on September 12, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on September 12 called for an impeachment inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden encouraged by his party’s right flank — a move certain to further divide lawmakers as they struggle to passing legislation to avoid a government shutdown.
“I am directing our House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters.
Many in Mr. McCarthy’s party were infuriated when the House, then controlled by Democrats, twice impeached Republican President Donald Trump — in 2019 and 2021 — though he was acquitted both times in the Senate.
Mr. Biden, who defeated Mr. Trump in the 2020 election, is seeking re-election next year. Republicans, who now narrowly control the House, have accused Mr. 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.
A former business associate of the younger Biden told an House hearing that Hunter Biden sold the “illusion” of access to power while his father was vice president, according to a transcript released last month.
The White House has said there is no basis for an investigation and Mr. Biden has mocked Republicans over a possible impeachment.
Democrats have sought to portray Republican impeachment talk as an effort to distract public attention from the legal woes of Mr. Trump, who faces four separate criminal indictments while running for his party’s nomination to face Mr. Biden in the 2024 U.S. election.
Mr. Trump has pressed Republicans to try to remove Mr. Biden from office. Several hard-right Republicans have said they will not vote for must-pass spending bills unless Mr. McCarthy greenlights an impeachment inquiry.
The U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to impeach federal officials including the president for treason, bribery and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” A president can be removed from office if the House approves articles of impeachment by a simple majority and the Senate votes by a two-thirds majority to convict after holding a trial.
Any Biden impeachment effort would be unlikely to succeed. Even if the Republican-controlled House votes to impeach Mr. Biden — an uncertain prospect, given the party’s narrow 222-212 vote margin — it would almost certainly fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Mr. Trump is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice. He was acquitted both times after trials in the Senate thanks to votes by his fellow Republicans that prevented the chamber from achieving the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.
In his first impeachment, the House in 2019 charged Mr. Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations. In his second impeachment, the House impeached him in 2021 on a charge of inciting an insurrection following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
The first impeachment sought to remove him from office. The second, with a trial held after he left office, sought to disqualify Mr. Trump from ever again holding the presidency.
Mr. Trump, as he has done with many investigations into his actions, called both impeachments politically motivated witch hunts.
Mr. Biden in July mocked Republican lawmakers threatening to impeach him.
“Republicans may have to find something else to criticise me for now that inflation is coming down. Maybe they’ll decide to impeach me because it’s coming down. I don’t know. I’d love that one,” Mr. Biden said at the time.
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