The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday whether to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden based on his son's controversial international dealings -- a move deemed baseless by Democrats.
Republicans have yet to provide any solid evidence of corruption by the president, and the Democrat-led Senate would be unlikely to convict the US leader.
But the episode would prove a major headache for Biden as he campaigns to keep his job for a second term ahead of the November 2024 general election.
Conservatives accuse Biden's scandal-plagued son Hunter of corrupt influence-peddling with his father via his overseas business dealings in Ukraine and China before Joe Biden became president.
"My father was not financially involved in my business," Hunter Biden, who has become a prime target of the right, said Wednesday. The business pursuits in question occurred while his father was vice president under Barack Obama.
Hunter Biden, a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist-turned-artist whose life has been marred by alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction, was speaking to reporters from Capitol Hill, refusing to attend a closed-door hearing led by Republicans just inside.
Admitting to having "made mistakes in my life," the 53-year-old accused the Republican party's far-right, led by former president Donald Trump, of a smear campaign meant to "dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father."
Biden, 81, who has always steadfastly defended his son, is heading for a likely rematch with Trump in next year's election.
Bowing to the party's hard right, Republican leaders already initiated an impeachment investigation into Joe Biden earlier this year and began inquiry hearings at the end of September.
However experts interviewed during the proceedings agreed there was no evidence to justify a Biden impeachment.
"There is zero evidence that President Biden has engaged in any wrongdoing," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, said Tuesday.
The Republicans, however, believe the new inquiry, which this time will head to a floor vote, will offer them additional power and new ammunition to incriminate Joe Biden.
The floor vote is scheduled to take place after 5:00 pm (2200 GMT).
The US Constitution provides that Congress may remove a president for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Impeachment by the House, which is the political equivalent of a criminal indictment, would spark a "trial" by the Senate, with the president losing his job if convicted -- an unlikely scenario for Biden given the chambers' Democratic control.
Although three US presidents have been impeached -- Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021 -- none has ever been removed from office by the Senate.
