Republican-led US House votes to open impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden

The US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, a process that promises to deepen Washington’s political divide going into an election year in which Biden’s presumptive opponent, former president Donald Trump, will be tied up in legal proceedings.

The House voted 221 to 212, along party lines, to open the inquiry, which will authorise subpoenas already issued by Republicans and new ones, and allow three Republican-led panels already investigating Biden to hire outside counsel for assistance.

Before the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, called the resolution “the next necessary step” in a process that was set in motion by his predecessor, outgoing Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California.

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Johnson said in a Fox News interview that with the resolution, “we’ll be in the best position to do our constitutional responsibility”.

With alleged corruption related to activities of the president’s son Hunter at the centre of the inquiry, the younger Biden’s dealings with Chinese and Ukrainian entities may come under renewed scrutiny.

But with extensive investigations into these activities having failed to turn up any offence with which to charge the president, the likelihood of the House voting for impeachment is unclear, particularly given the Republicans’ thin majority in the chamber. That majority shrank further when the House voted on December 1 to expel George Santos, a Republican from New York.

Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, likened the impeachment inquiry drive to an MC Escher print because of the Republicans’ inability to cite a specific violation to serve as a point of origin.

US Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, speaks out against Republican efforts to open a Biden impeachment inquiry outside the Capitol on Wednesday. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

“The reason that mysteries are called ‘whodunnits’ is because they start with the crime and then you have to try to figure out who did it,” Raskin said on Wednesday. “But the Biden impeachment investigation is not a whodunnit. It’s a ‘what is it?’

“Nobody can tell you what Joe Biden’s alleged crime is, where it happened when it happened, what the motive was or who the victims are,” he said.

While two impeachment inquiries in recent history – that of Bill Clinton in 1998 and of Trump in 2019 – have led to impeachments, none has ever forced a president from office. Only the Senate has the ability to convict and remove someone from the White House, and only with a two-thirds majority.

The House impeached Trump a second time in 2021, soon after the January 6 attack on the Capitol and days before his term ended. He was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the insurrection.

Republicans open Joe Biden impeachment inquiry with focus on son Hunter

Republicans allege that Hunter Biden’s business connections in China were cemented more than a decade ago, when his father was president Barack Obama’s vice- president, and remained intact over the years.

Starting in 2017 and over the course of about 14 months, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy and its executives paid US$4.8 million to entities controlled by or somehow connected to Hunter Biden, according to a September 2020 report by Senate Republicans.

The extensive report on these ties highlighted what Republicans called “a vast web of corporate connections and financial transactions between and among the Biden family and Chinese nationals”.

These details, along with those relating to the president’s son’s membership on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma while the senior Biden was vice-president, have been public for years.

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, speaks outside the US Capitol on Wednesday. He lashed out at Republican investigators who have been digging into his business dealings, insisting that he will testify only before a congressional committee in public. Photo: AP

Republicans allege that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in order to stop an investigation into Burisma. Democrats have pointed out that the Justice Department investigated the claim when Trump was president and closed the matter after eight months, finding “insufficient evidence”.

Republicans had subpoenaed Hunter Biden to appear for a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, which, along with the House Ways and Means Committee, are spearheading the impeachment effort.

Instead of appearing for the deposition, scheduled to take place before the House vote, Hunter Biden held a news conference outside of the Capitol, where he reiterated his offer to testify in a public hearing.

He rejected Republican claims that his father was involved in his business activities – “it did not happen,” he said – and called the investigation politically motivated.

“In the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances,” he said. “But to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd. It’s shameless.”

South China Morning Post