There was a commonsense question at the heart of Thursday’s congressional hearing on whether to launch a formal impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden that Republicans are counting on Americans to ask themselves. Would any foreign business hire the president’s son, Hunter, if it were not for his father?
Out of that, Republicans on the House of Representatives oversight committee spun a vision of Biden Sr sitting atop a sprawling crime family that would be the envy of the mafia. But, as so often in modern American politics, the spectre of Donald Trump was lurking in the shadows.
This was not an impeachment hearing. It was a hearing to decide if there is enough evidence to merit an impeachment inquiry into the president.
But it was clear from the moment the Republican committee chair, James Comer, banged his gavel to launch more than six hours of accusation, distraction, attacks on witnesses and grandstanding that, for his party at least, the matter was already settled.
Comer promised “a mountain of evidence, revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain”. If so, it wasn’t immediately evident amid the endless flashing of documents and emails on to the committee’s screens, and the convoluted attempts to make connections through supposition and suspicion.
At the heart of the Republican case is that foreign business interests in Ukraine, China and beyond only hired Hunter Biden, described by one congressman as a man “addicted to drugs who frequented prostitutes”, because he offered the reward of “influence peddling” with his father going back years to when he was vice-president.
Comer then made the leap to claim that, therefore, Joe Biden must have been on the take.
“For years, President Biden has lied to the American people about his knowledge of and participation in his family’s corrupt business schemes. The door was wide open to those who purchased what a business associate described as the Biden brand,” he told the hearing.
“These business targets include foreign oligarchs who sent millions of dollars to his family. It also includes a Chinese national who wired a quarter of a million dollars to his son.”
A YouGov poll last month found that nearly three-quarters of Americans do think Hunter used his father’s position to make money. A little more than half of Democrats agreed, although the findings were blunted by the fact that the poll also said a majority of Americans think the children of all US presidents profit from their parents.
But most Americans did not agree that meant Joe Biden was being paid off, although the fact that 43% do and 28% are not sure should worry the White House as evidence that the Republican accusations have some traction.
There’s little doubt that Hunter made millions from foreign business deals. In June, he agreed a plea deal admitting that he failed to pay taxes on millions in 2017 and 2018, although that agreement fell apart after a judge blocked it. In August, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed a special counsel to investigate Hunter’s finances.
But even the Republicans’ own witnesses would only go so far as to say that, while there was enough evidence for an investigation, it was not enough to establish the president’s guilt.
The Republicans called on law professor and Fox News legal analyst, Jonathan Turley, to explain why an impeachment inquiry could not be avoided. He stated as fact that Hunter Biden was corrupt and said the country needed to know if the president was in on it.
“The question is, did the president know? Did he encourage this type of corruption? And the key here once again … you have to begin with a recognition that what Hunter Biden and his associates were doing was corrupt. That’s what influence peddling is,” said Turley.
Asked if, in that case, Congress was “obligated to have this inquiry”, Turley agreed.
“I believe it’s your duty to determine if the president is involved in what is a known form of corruption,” he said.
Still Turley acknowledged that, as things stand, the evidence is not there.
“I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish, but I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden,” he said.
That would make any impeachment inquiry a fishing expedition. Or at least a distraction from what the Democrats say is really going on.
The lone witness for the Democrats, Michael Gerhardt, a professor of jurisprudence at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the committee that the evidence did not show that the president was, in effect, in the pay of his son.
“There have been lots of assumptions, lots of accusations. But the dots have not been connected,” he said.
The Democratic congresswoman Melanie Ann Stansbury connected other dots. She said the hearing wasn’t really about Biden at all but a “chilling” attempt to make the dozens of pending criminal charges against Trump seem “like they’re not serious crimes”.
“What is this hearing actually about? It’s a campaign strategy. It’s a misuse of official resources. It is this committee and loyalists of Donald Trump doing his bidding to bolster his chances of winning back the White House and securing their majority in the next election,” she said.
“I think it’s obvious who the grand puppet master is here.”
