House lawmakers advanced a resolution Tuesday to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, setting up a floor vote Wednesday to formally endorse an investigation into whether Mr. Biden engaged in influence peddling with his family while serving as vice president.
A House panel voted to approve the impeachment resolution in a 9-4 party-line vote that opened the debate over Mr. Biden’s behavior dating back to his second term as vice president in the Obama administration.
Democrats said an impeachment inquiry is a “colossal waste of time” and “petty political vengeance” for former President Donald Trump, who was impeached twice by the Democrat-led House.
Republicans say Mr. Biden’s behavior while vice president deserves special scrutiny, along with evidence of political influence in the Justice Department’s treatment of his son, Hunter Biden, and the elder Biden in an ongoing tax fraud case.
Republicans contend Mr. Biden involved himself in the lucrative business deals of his son who, along with the president’s younger brother, James Biden, and their business associates, were leveraging Mr. Biden’s powerful position to make millions of dollars from deals in China, Ukraine, Russia and other foreign countries.
Three House committees have been conducting an informal impeachment inquiry for several weeks and have uncovered bank records showing the Biden family and associates raked in $24 million in foreign business deals. Witnesses have testified that Mr. Biden phoned in to his son’s business meetings and showed up in person at several of them.
SEE ALSO: Proof ‘cannot be ignored’ against President Biden, contends Speaker Johnson
Republicans say House approval of an impeachment inquiry gives the ongoing investigations more authority to obtain documents and testimony from the resistant Biden administration and Biden family members.
The Oversight and Accountability Committee has been battling to obtain the testimony of Hunter Biden, who has been ordered under a subpoena to appear for a closed-door deposition on Wednesday but may not show up.
“We are formalizing their impeachment inquiry efforts to give the House the strongest legal standing to pursue needed information and enforce subpoenas,” said Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican and chair of the House Rules Committee. “Allowing this chamber to be at the apex of its constitutional power is vital to our system of checks and balances.”
Following the vote in the House Rules Committee, the resolution now moves to the House floor, where a vote is expected later this week and is likely to pass.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, wrote in USA Today on Tuesday that a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry is warranted because House investigators have uncovered mounting evidence of influence peddling that “cannot be ignored, and the pushback from the White House and others must be addressed.”
If the House approves the resolution, it will open the third formal presidential impeachment inquiry in four years.
A Democratic inquiry led to the impeachment of Mr. Trump in 2019 over his attempt to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate whether Mr. Biden used his authority as vice president to force out Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to help a Ukrainian gas company that was paying Hunter Biden a $1 million annual salary. That effort by Mr. Trump came in the lead-up to his unsuccessful reelection bid against Mr. Biden in 2020.
House Democrats, along with 10 Republicans, voted to impeach Mr. Trump again in 2021 over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
House Democrats said Tuesday that their impeachment inquiries into President Trump were justified but the latest effort by Republicans is not.
“Their fundamental problem isn’t a lack of evidence,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Pennsylvania Democrat, said. “They have mountains of evidence. Their problem is none of it proves their baseless accusations and they know it.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.