Republicans were set to launch their impeachment inquiry of President Biden Thursday with a congressional hearing that is expected to lay out questions about his behavior but no evidence of wrongdoing.
Three GOP-led House committees plan to use the high-stakes hearing to lay out legal issues they believe are raised by their long-running probes into alleged ties to his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
“Congress has a duty to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s corruption,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), chairman of the oversight committee.
The debut hearing won’t feature any witnesses with information about Biden or his son’s tangled business deals.
Instead, it will feature outside experts in tax law, criminal investigations and constitutional law.
That sounds like a less-than-compelling opening argument to the American people as Republicans wade into a process that is supposed to be reserved for the most serious “high crimes and misdemeanors” committed by a president.
Democrats have scoffed at the entire exercise as a partisan effort to tarnish President Biden with innuendo and salacious details about his son, who struggled for years with substance abuse.
They point out the embarrassing timing just days before the government will shut down if the GOP-led house fails to pass a stopgap spending plan.
“Three days before they’re set to shut down the United States government, Republicans launch a baseless impeachment drive against President Biden,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin hours before the hearing started. “No one can figure out the logic of either course of action.”
In the run-up to the hearing, Republicans were touting a tranche of new documents and bank records that detail wire transfers from a Chinese businessman to Hunter Biden in 2019.
Hunter Biden had listed his father’s address on the wire transfer form, which Republicans claim offers a clear link to the president.
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Andrew Harnik/AP Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, speaks to guests during the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, April 18, 2022, in Washington. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, said the presidential son used the address only because he was between residences and was “his only permanent address at the time.”
“Once again Rep. Comer peddles lies to support a premise …. that evaporates in thin air the moment facts come out,” Lowell said in a statement.
Republicans have been investigating Hunter Biden for years, since his father was vice president.
While they have unearthed some questionable practices by Biden’s son, there is no proof that the president abused his position or accepted bribes as Republicans suggest.
Republicans are also eager to get answers about the federal investigation in Hunter Biden’s taxes and gun use that began in 2018.
President Biden says he has nothing to do with the case and it’s being investigated by independent Special Counsel David Weiss, a holdover from former President Donald Trump’s reign.
