As of: March 21, 2024, 10:35 a.m
Comments
Press
Split
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), right, and the panel's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), on Wednesday.
© Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post
The Republicans want to force Biden out of office.
But the process is virtually on hold - due to a lack of evidence.
The choice is much more dangerous.
Washington – The impeachment process for President Joe Biden is not progressing.
To be sure, House Republicans held a hearing and presented witnesses who repeated thin allegations that members of the Biden family were financially capitalizing on their father's name.
But will that be enough to bring down the man in the White House in this way?
The doubts are getting bigger and bigger.
Impeachment trial against Joe Biden: Republicans have problems with evidence
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer launched the investigation into Biden last year with allegations of high crimes and misdemeanors that Republicans have struggled to support since then.
Fifteen months later, Republicans in Congress have received no evidence or testimony proving that Joe Biden was directly involved in or benefited from his son Hunter Biden's business dealings.
And although some of Hunter Biden's close associates have placed his father close to those involved in some businesses - undermining the president's claims that he was unaware of Hunter's activities - none of the allegations matched Republicans' allegations of Hunter Biden's business dealings Activities made it possible to exert influence that enriched Joe Biden and his family.
With their narrow majority, Republicans in the House of Representatives need near-unanimity to pass articles of impeachment against the president, which they don't have.
Instead, skepticism among Republicans has only grown since an FBI informant was charged with lying about the Bidens, throwing what had been presented as a key piece of evidence into disarray.
Read The Washington Post for free for four weeks
Your quality ticket from washingtonpost.com: Get exclusive research and 200+ stories free for four weeks.
Doubts are growing: Joe Biden probably doesn't have to fear impeachment
In the absence of these voices, Comer and other members of the investigative committees have turned to the possibility of criminal charges.
Comer has threatened to file “multiple” criminal charges, but it remains unclear whether lawmakers will formally accuse President Biden of a crime and what crimes they are accusing him of.
My news
At Peter Kraus' concert: child star Cornelia Froboess barely recognizable
Princess Kate will talk about her operation - after reading her conditions
Weather models decide: “The latest forecast for Easter Sunday is a blast” read
From summer: This is how high the increase will be for an average pension
Dead animal on the surface of the water: Fishermen make an impressive discovery while fishing at sea
Putin's bomber under fire: Ukraine attacks Russian nuclear aircraft hub read
“I'm not sure how we can prosecute the president without impeaching him,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong.
“I mean, the [Justice Department] will never take up this anyway.”
Armstrong, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, added that the committee could pursue criminal charges for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act against several witnesses who testified before the committee.
Hunter Biden, who declined to appear Wednesday, faces nine criminal charges in a long-running federal tax case and gun possession charges.
“My opinion on impeachment in general?
It's a very high bar that they have to meet and they have to convince their colleagues that it's the right thing to do,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
“If they decline to initiate impeachment proceedings, I think that is the right decision.”
Many Republican accusations against Biden fall flat
The apparent collapse of one of House Republicans' most important investigations was preceded by a series of incidents in which Comer, who was even criticized by some Republican colleagues for his
Fox News-
centric approach to the investigation, made allegations against Biden and his son, before they fizzled out publicly.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, called the hearing "the end of perhaps the most spectacular failure in the history of congressional investigations" in his opening statement Wednesday.
Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, is testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
© Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post
“Our colleagues now appear to be preparing to save face by ending the impeachment farce with criminal charges,” Raskin said.
“But criminal referrals require evidence of crimes.
And the only crimes we have seen are those of the Grand Old Party’s own star witnesses.”
Any criminal complaint sent by Congress to the Justice Department would be a symbolic act that carries no legal weight on its own and leaves prosecutors to decide whether to file charges.
But a criminal referral could express the Oversight Committee's findings as clearly as possible and serve as a communication tool for Republicans who have sought to legitimize baseless claims and theories about Biden and his family.
Some members indicated they would be open to reviewing any new evidence that House investigators might uncover in the meantime.
But Rep. Mike Garcia noted that Republicans are running out of time ahead of the rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump - and that Biden faces bigger challenges in the election than a possible impeachment trial in a Democratic-controlled Senate is likely to fail.
The election against Donald Trump is the much bigger problem for Biden
“Ultimately, the American people will vote in October or November on whether or not this president is fit for office,” Garcia said.
“I think he's had enough other challenges and failures that impeachment probably wouldn't even affect the outcome of the election.”
Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, and Jason Galanis, who is serving a nearly 16-year prison sentence in Montgomery, Alabama, for multiple fraud charges, both testified at Wednesday's hearing at the behest of Republicans.
They both claimed that Joe Biden was involved in his family members' business activities, before providing details of limited interactions with Joe Biden to support the claims.
Bobulinski pointed to a May 2017 meeting with Joe Biden arranged by Hunter Biden and the president's brother, James, as evidence that Joe Biden knew about his son's dealings with foreign companies.
But when asked about the meeting on Wednesday, Bobulinski did not specifically mention pursuing a deal with CEFC, a Chinese energy conglomerate, when describing the 45-minute meeting in Los Angeles.
"We talked about my background, my family's military background, the various business ventures I had undertaken around the world, the family I worked with - Joe spent time talking about his family, some of the tragedies “that they had lived through,” Bobulinski described the conversation with Joe Biden, who was not in office at the time.
Republicans present questionable witnesses in impeachment trial
Galanis, testifying via Zoom from prison, also described a "relatively brief discussion" with then-Vice President Biden in May 2014, after Hunter Biden at a party Galanis and a small group of people - including Russian billionaire Jelena Baturina and her husband Yuri Luzhkov and Hunter Biden's former business partner Devon Archer - were taken aside and called Joe Biden over the loudspeaker.
Galanis claimed that the conversation was about Baturina and Luzhkov's upcoming visit to Washington and "they talked about being good to your boy."
When asked if that call was about Hunter Biden giving potential investors "access to the Biden brand," Galanis replied that it was.
During the hearing, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) cited inconsistencies between the statements of members of the Biden family and the statements of Bobulinski and Galanis as a possible basis for another criminal referral: lying to Congress.
After the hearing, Palmer defended the Oversight Committee's process and warned that members still had time to consider impeachment.
“I think we have to be very deliberate and careful because it's about the lives of a lot of people.
My goal is not to catch anyone, my goal is to find out the truth,” Palmer said.
The hearing was at times very controversial.
When Rep. Lisa C. McClain tried to belittle Hunter Biden's reputation by derisively calling him a "golden child," Rep. Ayanna Pressley laughed and muttered that McClain's comment was "rich."
“Look at your party,” Pressley added.
“Give me a break.”
At one point, Rep. Jared Moskowitz urged Comer to file a motion to impeach Biden.
"When can we tell the American people that you're going to stop wasting your money and just request an impeachment vote?" Moskowitz said.
“We don’t do snap votes like you do,” replied Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.
Democrats accuse Republicans of lying
Several Democrats accused Republicans of holding an impeachment hearing that was launched in part based on an allegation that authorities now say is untrue.
Special prosecutor David Weiss, who previously filed criminal charges against Hunter Biden, announced an indictment last month against an FBI informant whose claims Comer had touted as a key piece of evidence in the impeachment inquiry for allegedly lying to the FBI.
Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley last spring uncovered unfounded claims in 2020 by Alexander Smirnov - a former confidential FBI source - that Biden was involved in a bribery scheme and called on the FBI to produce the document containing Smirnov's claims.
The allegations made by Smirnov were previously reviewed by the FBI under then-Attorney General William P. Barr and were found to be unfounded and subsequently dropped.
However, Comer and other Republicans in Congress argued for months that Smirnov's claims were evidence that the Bidens were involved in corrupt dealings and that the FBI did not investigate those claims.
The saga received wide media coverage;
Sean Hannity's show on Fox News aired at least 85 segments about the baseless claim that Biden took a bribe, according to a tally by
Media Matters for America.
“This entire investigation is based on a piece of groundbreaking information that was located in a secret SCIF room, and in that room was a document that directly accused President Biden of a $10 million bribery scheme,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez .
“What happened a month ago?
The FBI arrested the person who made these allegations because he falsified his statement to the FBI.
The entire impeachment process is based on an actual proven person who lied.”
What do Russian agents have to do with the case against Biden?
Democrats also questioned Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who was convicted in a campaign finance fraud case and appeared Wednesday, about his time working with Giuliani in 2018 and 2019 to ferret out damaging information about Joe Biden .
The Ukrainian-American businessman called out the cohort of pro-Trump lawmakers who spread misinformation about the Bidens and their work in Ukraine.
“The only information ever disseminated about the Bidens and Ukraine came from one source and one source only: Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas testified.
At the end of the hearing, Comer said he was inviting the president to testify before Congress, an invitation that a White House spokesman responded to with a laugh on social media.
About the author
Jacqueline Alemany
is a congressional investigations reporter at The Washington Post.
Previously, she was the author of The Early 202, the Post's flagship newspaper that delivers the most important news early in the morning to the nation's many power centers.
Alemany also serves as a guest editor on NBC News and MSNBC.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on March 21, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.