House approves formal impeachment probe of President Biden’s involvement in family business deals

The House voted Wednesday to authorize Republicans’ ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Biden, launching a formal probe into allegations he helped his family rake in millions of dollars from foreign business deals while serving as vice president.  

House Speaker Mike Johnson and lawmakers investigating Mr. Biden said the vote, which passed along party lines, 221-212, empowers them to obtain witness testimony and other evidence from the Biden administration, which has been stonewalling their probe, and to determine whether that evidence warrants a vote to impeach the president. 

“With today’s resolution we are ensuring that the House will be able to complete its inquiry,” said Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican and chair of the House Rules Committee. “We will secure the evidence we need and uncover the facts we need to make the full and fair determination.”

In a statement, the president blasted House Republicans for wasting time on a partisan probe instead of working on issues important to Americans.

“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Mr. Biden said. “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. The American people deserve better.”

The vote follows a months-long investigation by three House committees that have obtained witnesses’ testimony, bank records and other evidence they say raise serious questions about Mr. Biden’s involvement in an alleged influence-peddling scheme with China, Russia, Ukraine and other foreign adversaries. 

Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said investigators are at a pivotal moment in their probe and need the additional authority provided by an impeachment inquiry vote to force cooperation from the Biden administration.

“We will soon depose and interview several members of the Biden family and their associates about these influence-peddling schemes, but we are facing obstruction from the White House,” Mr. Comer said. 

Mr. Comer on Wednesday initiated contempt of Congress proceedings against the president’s son Hunter Biden after he flouted a subpoena to appear at a closed-door deposition. The president’s son instead offered to appear at a public hearing and lambasted the GOP-led inquiry at a press conference on the lawn of the Senate. 

He denied that his father was involved “financially” in his business deals, then left the Capitol grounds without answering questions. 

Republicans say Mr. Biden played a role in securing his son’s business deals and obtained witness testimony that the then-vice president would phone in or stop in to his son’s meetings with foreign business partners.

Hunter Biden, 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, according to witnesses who have testified in the House probe. 

Democrats said the Republicans’ claims about Mr. Biden have been repeatedly debunked and that GOP investigators were initiating the inquiry at the behest of former President Donald Trump, who was impeached twice when Democrats led the House and is now the dominant front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. 

“Their whole investigation is built on lies,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat. “It’s an extreme political stunt designed to distract from how incompetent Republicans are and how obsessed they are with Donald Trump, a twice-impeached ex-president who has been indicted more times that he’s been elected.”

GOP investigators say the evidence is piling up against the president. They have obtained bank records showing the Biden family and associates banked $24 million from foreign business deals and hid the transactions in a labyrinth of shell companies. 

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said the president’s son on Wednesday changed his tune about the nature of his father’s involvement amid the mounting evidence. 

“All we’ve heard is Joe Biden had no involvement, now his son does a press conference when he’s supposed to be getting deposed and said he wasn’t ‘financially involved,’” Mr. Jordan said. “What involvement was it?”

The House vote launches 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. At the time, Mr. Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company that was paying Hunter Biden a $1 million annual salary. 

The Democrats, with 10 Republicans, voted to impeach Mr. Trump again in 2021 over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump attack at the Capitol. Lawmakers blamed the president for the riotous mob that invaded the Capitol while they were in session certifying Mr. Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. 

House Democrats said their impeachment inquiries into then-President Trump were justified, but the GOP’s probe of Mr. Biden is not warranted.

“We did not need Sherlock Holmes and a magnifying glass to define the presidential crime with Donald Trump,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat. “It came right into this House and smashed us in the face.”