BREAKING: Tension In White House As House Votes To Formalize Impeachment Inquiry Into President Biden (WHAT TO KNOW)

BREAKING: Tension In White House As House Votes To Formalize Impeachment Inquiry Into President Biden (WHAT TO KNOW)

On Wednesday, House Republicans voted to officially formalize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, a move prompted by the critical stage reached in their investigation and mounting pressure from the right-wing.

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The resolution received unanimous support from GOP members, securing a 221-212 vote, including Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, who had previously expressed hesitancy earlier in the week.

Until this juncture, House Republicans lacked sufficient votes to validate their ongoing inquiry through a full chamber vote. The investigation has faced challenges in uncovering evidence of wrongdoing by the president, contributing to the absence of unified support from the entire GOP conference.

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Following the vote, House Oversight Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan celebrated their success, overcoming initial resistance to the inquiry when it was unilaterally launched in September under then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

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“We are very pleased with the vote today,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, told reporters. “I think that sent a message loud and clear to the White House.”

Jordan said the vote would “help us get those key individuals in to speak to us in a more timely fashion.”

“The House has now spoken and I think pretty loudly, pretty clearly with every single Republican voting in favor of moving into this official impeachment inquiry phase,” Jordan said.

Biden said in a statement shortly after the vote, “Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies. Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”

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The vote came after Hunter Biden defied Republican investigators’ subpoena for closed-door testimony and reiterated that he is willing to testify publicly as part of the GOP-led investigation into the president.

“I am here to testify at a public hearing, today, to answer any of the committees’ legitimate questions,” Hunter Biden said in his first public statement since being criminally indicted twice. “Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say.”

Following Hunter’s statement, the Republican chairman behind the impeachment inquiry into the president said they will start contempt of Congress proceedings against the president’s son for not participating in the closed-door deposition.

Hunter defended his father, saying, “Let me state as clearly as I can, my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not in my partnership with the Chinese private businessman, not in my investments home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist.”

He continued, “In the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances. But to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd. It’s shameless. There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen.”

Wednesday’s vote was partly influenced by the White House’s assertion that the subpoenas issued by the trio of GOP-led congressional committees spearheading the investigation were deemed illegitimate without an official House vote authorizing the inquiry. This stance compelled some hesitant and more centrist Republican lawmakers to align with their party’s investigative initiatives. Notably, the Trump administration had employed a similar argument against House Democrats at the outset of the 2019 impeachment proceedings.

As explained by various GOP lawmakers and aides supporting the effort, the rationale behind pushing for a floor vote is to bolster their legal standing against the White House. A formal vote is seen as a means to reinforce their subpoenas, providing added strength to compel crucial witness testimony.

“The inquiry will help us be more informed,” GOP Rep. Nick LaLota, who represents a swing district in New York, told CNN.

The GOP’s inquiry is potentially strengthened by the recent tax indictment against Hunter Biden, aligning with many of the alleged financial transactions and international business dealings that Republicans have rigorously scrutinized in their own investigations.

In response to accusations of obstructing the inquiry, a recent White House memo highlighted that Republicans have obtained access to over 35,000 pages of private financial records, more than 2,000 pages of Treasury Department financial reports, conducted at least 36 hours of witness interviews, and, just this week, commenced the receipt of 62,000 additional pages from the National Archives, including a substantial portion of Joe Biden’s communications during his tenure as vice president.

Despite the majority of House Republicans supporting the inquiry vote, GOP leadership has emphasized that formalizing the inquiry does not necessarily imply an impending impeachment of the president. This distinction is highlighted even as internal pressure within the party and among the Republican base continues to mount.

“We’re not going to prejudge the outcome of this because we can’t,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “It’s not a political calculation. We’re following the law and we are the rule of law team and I’m going to hold to that.”

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, echoed Johnson’s sentiment by telling reporters, “Voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment.”

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who has been pushing Republicans to impeach the president, told CNN the reason he sees his party’s leaders signaling caution is because House Republicans do not have the votes to actually impeach the president, particularly in their shrinking, narrow majority.

“I think it’s a realistic approach,” Gaetz said. “I don’t think we have the votes to impeach anyone.”

Indeed, moderate GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who supports authorizing an impeachment inquiry, said that “more likely than not,” Republicans will not end up bringing articles of impeachment against the president because the evidence will not raise to the bar of high crimes and misdemeanors, the standard for impeachment.

While Republican leaders are emphasizing caution, others in the party are ready to go full steam ahead.

“I think we start the inquiry and I wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing is impeachment,” GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas told CNN.

Throughout the process, House Democrats and the White House have consistently rejected and at times disproven the allegations put forth by Republicans, particularly those attempting to establish a connection between Joe Biden and his son’s lucrative international business ventures.

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, criticized Republican attempts to initiate an impeachment inquiry. He argued that House Republicans are seeking to cast a “dark cloud” over the president, intending for it to linger into the upcoming election next year.

“That of course is the whole purpose of the impeachment inquiry,” he said Monday. “There is not one particle linking Joe Biden to a crime, and yet they insist that there is going to be a Senate trial for impeachment of Joe Biden in the fall during the presidential campaign,” Raskin said.

Since McCarthy initiated the inquiry in September, the trio of committees spearheading the investigation has conducted interviews with various officials from the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service. They have also amassed a substantial volume of documents and newly acquired bank records, including those belonging to Biden family members.

Despite Republicans issuing fresh subpoenas and scheduling additional depositions, including with the president’s brother and son, they have yet to uncover credible evidence substantiating their most significant claims against Biden. Only one hearing related to the inquiry has taken place since its launch. During that hearing, expert witnesses called by Republicans acknowledged that GOP investigators had not presented sufficient evidence to support the accusations they were leveling.

In the lead-up to Wednesday’s vote, each of the three committees leading different aspects of the inquiry sought to generate momentum.

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