WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee on Thursday convened its first hearing in the GOP’s impeachment inquiry, presenting a panel of Republican-picked witnesses who said while there is no evidence of a crime by Joe Biden, more bank records are needed from the president and his son Hunter to determine if there might be.
Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said the hearing would focus on whether the president “engaged in impeachable offenses under the U.S. Constitution,” and earlier this week said House Republicans would present evidence they say they’ve uncovered about “Biden’s knowledge of and role in his family’s domestic and international business practices.”
Democrats argued that Republicans have no evidence of a crime and are simply trying to impeach Biden as retribution for the House having twice impeached Trump. Democrats also ridiculed Republicans for holding a heard as the government careens toward a shutdown as the GOP argues over funding legislation.
Comer said in his opening statement Biden family members and their associates “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019” from foreign sources. “What were the Bidens selling to make all this money? Joe Biden himself,” he said.
Judiciary chair, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, called it “a tale as old as time. Politician takes action that makes money for his family and then he tries to conceal it.”
One of the panel’s expert witnesses, law professor Jonathan Turley, acknowledged that the evidence Republicans had gathered so far, however, doesn’t prove their case.
“I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment,” he said, but that he does believe it warrants an inquiry.
The ranking Democrat at the hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said his Republican colleagues were presenting 12,000 pages of bank records that didn’t include a “single dime” going to the president.
“If the Republicans had a smoking gun or even a dripping water pistol, they would be presenting it today, but they’ve got nothing on Joe Biden,” he said. He also accused them of holding the hearing and shutting down the government at the behest of former President Donald Trump.
The House Republicans, Raskin said, were acting “like flying monkeys on a mission for the Wicked Witch of the West.”
Besides Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was a witness for Republicans when House Democrats launched their first impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump in 2019, the GOP witnesses who were testifying before the panel are Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic accountant and Eileen O’Connor, a former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department’s Tax Division.
The Democrats’ witness was Michael J. Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who testified during Trump’s first impeachment inquiry. Gerhardt was also a joint Democratic-Republican witness in the lead-up to former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. He criticized the inquiry into Biden as lacking foundation.
House Republicans have said they are looking into whether Biden improperly aided his son or profited off his business dealings. They’ve claimed, without evidence, that Biden engaged in a bribery scheme and that he has been involved in his son’s business ventures.
The White House has repeatedly rejected the House GOP’s assertion that Biden abused the power of his office to enrich his family. On the eve of Thursday’s hearing, the White House released a 15-page memo rebutting GOP statements.
The White House said, for example, that the alleged bribery scheme is based on an FBI document that included a tip from an unnamed source. The Justice Department investigated the allegation and concluded that there wasn’t anything to substantiate it.
The White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, Ian Sams, suggested in a statement Tuesday that Republicans like Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio are simply trying to distract from the looming government shutdown that could begin this weekend if Congress fails to pass a spending bill.
“Do Comer and Jordan have any explanation for why they are prioritizing conspiracy theory attacks on President Biden over averting a government shutdown that would inflict real pain on Ohio and Kentucky workers and families? They should focus on doing their jobs to avoid economic disaster — not these partisan, D.C. games that have nothing to do with helping Americans’ lives,” Sams said.
The hearing comes at a crucial time for Congress: Lawmakers have been trying to pass government funding legislation ahead of a Saturday night deadline to avoid a shutdown. Many congressional Republicans, however, have indicated they support a shutdown and are shrugging off the consequences.
The impeachment inquiry got underway Sept. 12 when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., directed three committees to launch the investigation in an effort to access the bank records for Biden and his son.
Impeachment inquiries are rare in U.S. history. The most recent were the two that Democrats launched in 2019 and 2021, which resulted in two impeachments of Trump, the only president to be impeached more than once. The Senate acquitted him both times.
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