Three months after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, the House is set to vote Wednesday to formally authorize one. It’s a move that McCarthy dodged in September because he knew he didn’t have the support to pass any authorizing resolution in the face of skepticism from moderates and members from districts Biden won.
But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is plowing ahead despite the risk of a failed vote. He’s banking on his slim majority holding together in the name of asking Biden questions. What will happen when Republicans don’t get answers they like, though, is a whole other question.
But when has something like a lack of evidence ever stopped congressional Republicans from making allegations of corruption?
So far, the investigation has been less about the president himself and more about the business conducted by his son Hunter and his brother James over the last decade or so. There’s been no evidence that shows Biden used the office of the vice presidency or the presidency improperly to enrich himself or his relatives. But when has something like a lack of evidence ever stopped congressional Republicans from making allegations of corruption?
The White House has been tolerant and accommodating of the GOP’s probes — to a point, that is. While the Biden administration has turned over requested documents related to the investigation, last month special counsel Dick Sauber, who was hired last year to focus on countering GOP fishing trips, called out the fact that the House hadn’t voted to launch an inquiry as he insisted that Republicans withdraw subpoenas against Biden’s family members. The subpoena for Hunter Biden to testify, in particular, has been a subject of contention: His lawyer last month said his client would testify but demanded it be at a public hearing rather than behind closed doors.
The resulting standoff has been enough to persuade some previous GOP holdouts to vote to officially kick off the inquiry. “The president is saying he isn’t going to provide information until we get an inquiry, so I went from a no to a yes,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told Politico recently. “My view of it is, let’s just get the information so the voters have it [in November].” But there’s still a chance that the resolution fails, as the GOP has only a three-seat majority and at least one solid no vote — Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo. — lined up against it. You can expect, though, more vulnerable Republicans to frame a vote in favor of an inquiry the same way Bacon has: We’re just looking for answers, not voting to impeach Biden immediately.
The authorizing resolution that Republicans introduced is basically a copy-paste of the one that Democrats passed in 2019 ahead of the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump. It bears noting that at the time, Republicans, including McCarthy, had railed against Democrats for launching their proceedings without a vote. Trump’s own Justice Department declared in a 2020 memo that any and all subpoenas related to the impeachment that were issued before the House voted “had no compulsory effect” and thus negated the article of impeachment charging Trump with obstruction of Congress.
The GOP’s version offers few updates to the Democrats’ framework. That’s pretty unsurprising, as the whole point in this exercise is to build on what little precedent has been established when it comes to presidential impeachment inquiries. But Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., raised an important difference between the two bills during a meeting of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday. Whereas the 2019 resolution said that the Intelligence Committee “shall designate an open hearing or hearings,” the GOP’s draft says only that the committees “may designate an open hearing or hearings” (emphasis added).
It’s one word that makes a big difference in how this whole meshugas will proceed down the line.
It’s one word that makes a big difference in how this whole meshugas will proceed down the line. By the time Democrats held their vote in October 2019, only five weeks after first beginning their inquiry, even with the Trump administration’s stonewalling there had been enough evidence gathered through testimony, emails and documents to begin laying out the case to the public. In contrast, the first and, so far, only public hearing in the (officially unofficial) inquiry into Biden was an unmitigated disaster for Republicans. Small wonder, then, that they’re doing their best to make sure the process stays under wraps, and beyond serious scrutiny, for as long as possible.
As of Wednesday morning, it’s still not entirely clear the full GOP caucus is ready to move forward on the inquiry. If the vote does fail, it would mean that any legal challenge the Biden administration offers to counter GOP subpoenas would get a boost in court. After all, a majority of the House would have voted against opening an impeachment inquiry. If it passes, it would be at least a short-term political win for Johnson and his ability to whip his members ahead of a major vote.
But, no matter the outcome, very little about the GOP’s quixotic efforts will change. Voting to approve an inquiry wouldn’t guarantee that articles of impeachment are drafted down the line, let alone voted on, though my colleague Steve Benen is a bit more pessimistic on that front. But the real goal has always been to hurt Biden’s chances of re-election next year and give Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” when it’s correctly noted that he’s the only president to have been impeached twice. There’s no world where a temporary setback would be enough to deter Republican efforts to juxtapose the words “Biden” and “impeachment” throughout the 2024 election cycle.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.