Republican House Speaker hopes new inquiry will save his job — and tarnish the US president
Kevin McCarthy had been unsure for months about the wisdom of opening an impeachment probe into Joe Biden and allegations linking him with his son Hunter’s business affairs.
The Republican House Speaker knew it would be a risky political gamble as well as a direct legal challenge to the sitting US president.
But on Tuesday morning, McCarthy finally made his move, under heavy pressure from former president Donald Trump — who was twice impeached — and his allies on Capitol Hill.
The Speaker said he did not make the decision “lightly”, but insisted that the probe was needed in light of allegations of a “culture of corruption” at the heart of the White House driven by the president’s alleged involvement in the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden.
“The American people deserve to know that the public offices are not for sale and that the federal government is not being used to cover up the actions of a politically associated family,” McCarthy told reporters outside his office.
Most Democrats and even some Republicans say the case for opening an impeachment inquiry may be among the weakest ever against a sitting president. While federal prosecutors believe they have found enough to indict Hunter Biden in a tax and firearms case this month, no evidence has yet been presented to show wrongdoing by the president in any of his son’s other business affairs.
Yet the Speaker’s move may be as much about preservation of his own political power as the merits of the case. McCarthy has been facing rising heat from the right flank of the Republican party, including Georgia’s firebrand lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some had also threatened to stop funding the government as early as next month, or even to oust McCarthy from his post if he failed to move ahead with an impeachment inquiry.
“Speaker McCarthy had to do this for his conference — and to keep his job,” said a top former GOP congressional and White House staffer.
Even so, the investigation will still thrust the nature of the president’s relationship with his son more firmly into the 2024 election campaign — leading to hearings, depositions, witness testimony and, potentially, a vote that could shape the political landscape for weeks and months, casting a cloud over the president.
“There is no evidence of anything connected to the president and his abusing power,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University. “[But] it can damage him and that is the point: the hearings can help shape public opinion, energise the GOP and create concern in the electorate. You don’t need a smoking gun to create political smoke, and the GOP is well aware of this.”
McCarthy’s case for a probe is based on claims that the president used his office while he was vice-president to help Hunter Biden secure lucrative business deals and corporate positions, including a board seat at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.
McCarthy said Biden had “joined on multiple phone calls, and had multiple interactions” for his son’s financial benefit, claiming millions of dollars had flowed to the president’s family and his associates through shell companies.
But prosecutors looking into the allegations have struggled to find any direct link. The president has repeatedly denied that he was involved in Hunter Biden’s business, and the White House has blasted the impeachment move as “extreme politics at its worst”. Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, said on Tuesday the Republican accusations were “repackaged, inaccurate conspiracies”.
Many rank-and-file Republicans in Congress on Tuesday supported McCarthy’s move. “We need to get to the full truth, and an impeachment inquiry is the right way to do that,” said Mike Braun, a senator from Indiana.
But others are uncomfortable. Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor running for president in 2024 who managed Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings in 1998, said that despite a “lot of smoke” the impeachment inquiry “seems premature”. “We really haven’t got a handle on the facts yet,” he told the Financial Times.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor also running in the Republican primary, said he did not “see evidence yet that would support impeaching Joe Biden”. He added: “I think we’re cheapening impeachment by doing that kind of thing.”
Democrats will hope that McCarthy’s impeachment probe runs aground rapidly. The Speaker had initially vowed to put the opening of the investigation up for a vote in the House, but instead took the step unilaterally amid concerns that he lacked the votes given the very slim Republican majority.
Brendan Buck, a former Republican congressional aide and now a strategist at Seven Letter, a consultancy, said the impeachment process could give Democrats a way to attack Republicans as overreaching and extreme.
“Certainly it will rile up the base, but absent some bombshell . . . this is something of a gift to the president politically,” Buck said.
Some Democrats mocked the inquiry. John Fetterman, a senator from Pennsylvania, last week dared Republicans to try to impeach Biden, labelling the effort “a big circlejerk on the fringe right”.
On Tuesday, Fetterman reacted to news of the inquiry’s launch with laughter. “Oh, it’s devastating,” he added, with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker who launched Clinton’s impeachment 25 years ago, told the FT that if Republicans “go too fast, it could backfire”.
Rather than being damaged by the impeachment proceedings against him in late 1998, Clinton is widely seen to have benefited politically, including with a better than expected performance in that year’s midterm election.
But if Republicans proceeded slowly they might have more success, Gingrich said. “If the American people reach the conclusion that having a crook in the White House, who was actively taking money from foreign governments that are enemies of ours, is a bad idea, then they can move forward.”
Source: Financial Times
