For anyone following US politics post-2020, the moves to potentially impeach President Joe Biden land as inevitable. Equally predictable is the fact that the putative reason centres around the president’s son, Hunter, a figure of obsession on the US political right and a man who appears to have enough skeletons in his closet to staff a battalion in Jason and the Argonauts.
So is there anything to it? And what stage is the process at?
Allegations
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has ordered an impeachment inquiry into Biden, to investigate whether he benefited from Hunter’s business dealings during Joe’s time as vice president in the Obama administration. An impeachment inquiry is a formal step on a path that could ultimately end with a vote in the House of Representatives on whether to issue articles of impeachment — although there’s no guarantee that’s where this will end up.
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption and warrant further investigation,” McCarthy said last week.
There are two major allegations at the core of this. First, an unverified tip received by the FBI that Biden had pressured the government in Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who had been investigating Ukrainian energy firm Burisma — Hunter Biden was on the board — and that both Joe and Hunter had received US$5 million afterwards. This forms part of a wider narrative flowing from an investigation by the Republican-dominated House Oversight Committee, which alleged it had “identified over $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates”, back in May.
Further, back in July, two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigators told Congress that their investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax returns was subject to politically motivated impediments by Justice Department officials. Hunter at the time was expected to plead guilty to wilful failure to pay federal income tax and possession of a firearm while a drug user, but the plea deal fell apart when Trump-appointed US District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika raised concerns and refused to “rubber stamp” it.
The IRS employees who testified, supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and criminal investigator Joseph Ziegler, alleged that Hunter should have been charged with more serious offences and received leniency on account of his connection to the president.
So, is there something to it?
Not as yet. The claims that Joe Biden lobbied the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin on account of his investigations into Burisma cropped up first in 2019, while Donald Trump was approaching his first impeachment. There were a couple of teensy issues with it, as The Washington Post pointed out at the time, the big one being that Shokin was not investigating Burisma or Hunter Biden at the time of his widely welcomed ousting.
“Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma,” Daria Kaleniuk of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center said in 2019. “And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.”
Indeed, Joe Biden publicly bragged about getting Shokin done in because it was in keeping with US policy in Ukraine, as Colorado Republican Ken Buck has pointed out.
It seems appropriate that scrutiny is placed on how Hunter Biden made his money and any conflicts of interest this has caused his father. Indeed, a former business partner testified to the House Oversight Committee that Hunter would frequently put his father on speakerphone with business partners, selling the “illusion of access”, but that the then-VP was never directly involved in financial dealings. However, for all their florid language about tens of millions flowing from US enemies into the coffers of the “Biden crime family”, the Republicans are yet to locate the smoking gun directly connecting Joe Biden with anything dodgy.
What next?
As we had plenty of occasion to be reminded during the Trump years, for impeachment to result in the removal of a sitting president, it must be passed by a simple majority in the lower house and then by a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which is currently controlled by Democrats and thus where impeachment proceedings would come crashing to a halt. Republicans have acknowledged this, but argue the process could reveal the kind of evidence they are yet to uncover.
Expect a lot of discomfort for the Bidens between now and, say, November next year.
Is there a valid case for the US president’s impeachment or is Biden being railroaded? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
