The House oversight committee holds its first hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden on Thursday, marking an escalation of Republicans’ investigative work even as they fail to produce substantive evidence of the president’s alleged corruption.
The hearing comes two weeks after the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, launched the inquiry in response to demands from hard-right members of the House Republican conference.
“This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather the full facts and answers for the American public,” McCarthy said earlier this month. “That’s exactly what we want to know – the answers. I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well.”
But Democrats counter that Republicans’ have launched a hyper-partisan fishing expedition meant to defame Biden heading into the 2024 presidential election.
Here’s everything you need to know about the hearing:
What will be the subject of the hearing?
The hearing, entitled “The Basis for an Impeachment Inquiry of President Joseph R BidenJr”, will focus on “constitutional and legal questions” surrounding the president’s alleged involvement in his son’s business dealings, a spokesperson for the House oversight committee said last week.
“We’re going to have three credible witnesses,” Congressman James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, told ABC News last week. “We want to be able to explain what exactly an impeachment inquiry is and what the purpose is.”
Republicans have accused the president of financially enriching himself through the overseas business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden. A particular point of interest involves an unsubstantiated tip to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which claimed that Biden engaged in a foreign bribery scheme when he was vice-president.
According to the tip, Biden received a $5m bribe to help derail an investigation into the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden served on the board. But those allegations were reportedly investigated by the Trump justice department, and officials concluded there was not enough evidence to corroborate the claims.
Have Republicans produced evidence to substantiate their allegations of corruption?
Republicans have failed to produce a smoking gun directly linking the president to Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings. In July, one of Hunter Biden’s former business associates, Devon Archer, gave sworn testimony to congressional investigators that Hunter was selling his foreign clients “an illusion of access to his father”.
Republicans have pointed to a couple falsehoods in Biden’s public statements about his son’s business dealings to justify their impeachment inquiry. For example, during the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden alleged that his son had never made any money off business transactions in China. That was later contradicted by Hunter Biden himself, who testified in court that he had earned a substantial sum from China-based clients.
Another Republican gripe focuses on a 2015 dinner attended by Hunter Biden and the Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi. In 2020, the New York Post reported on emails obtained from a laptop formerly owned by Hunter Biden, which suggested that he had arranged for his father to meet Pozharskyi at the dinner. Biden’s team said the meeting did not occur, while other attendees of the dinner told the Washington Post that the then vice-president only stopped by briefly to visit with Alex Karloutsos, a leader in the Greek Orthodox church. Archer contradicted that characterization, telling investigators: “He had dinner.”
Regardless of those specific details, the rightwing accusation that Biden engaged in a widespread, corrupt scheme with his son to financially enrich himself remains unproven.
How has the White House responded to the launch of the impeachment inquiry?
The White House has accused House Republicans of engaging in “silly political Washington games” when they should be focused on passing a government spending bill, with just days left to avoid a federal shutdown.
“Extreme House Republicans are already telegraphing their plans to try to distract from their own chaotic inability to govern and the impacts of it on the country,” a White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, said last week.
“Staging a political stunt hearing in the waning days before they may shut down the government reveals their true priorities: to them, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families.”
Will Republicans draft articles of impeachment against Biden?
The answer to that question may depend on what – if any – new information comes out of the impeachment inquiry, but some House Republicans in swing districts are quite wary of impeaching Biden.
Some of the Republicans who represent House districts that Biden won in 2020, such as Congressman Mike Lawler of New York, appear to have taken a “wait-and-see” approach to the inquiry.
“Impeachment should not be, and must never be, political in nature or a tit-for-tat revenge game, and should only be used if the facts and evidence warrant it,” Lawler said earlier this month. “As of today, the House has not met the high bar of impeachment.”
Do Senate Republicans support this effort?
Senate Republicans have generally voiced more skepticism of the inquiry, with some members noting that House investigators have so far failed to substantiate the most salacious allegations against Biden.
“I haven’t heard any allegation of something that would rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor,” Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, said earlier this month. “I think it would be very unusual to actually see a referral of impeachment. I don’t expect that to happen.”
Could Biden be removed from office?
That seems virtually impossible at this point. Currently, House Republicans do not appear to have the votes to impeach Biden, given their narrow majority and differing views over the inquiry within their conference. Even if the House did impeach Biden, 60 senators would have to vote to convict Biden to have the president removed from office. The odds of that happening are slim to none with Democrats in control of the Senate.
Despite those long odds, House Republicans face intense pressure from the leader of their party to move expeditiously to impeach Biden. In late August, Trump issued an ultimatum to Republican lawmakers in a post shared on his social media platform Truth Social.
“IMPEACH the BUM,” Trump warned, “or fade into OBLIVION”.
