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U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday that he had directed the House Oversight Committee to open an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden around his family’s business dealings.
Our overarching question is why.
We understand the political answer to this question. McCarthy, who has only a tenuous grip on the fractious House Republican caucus, and therefore the House speakership, hopes that authorizing the impeachment inquiry may entice some GOP House members to support a budget deal, to avoid a government shutdown at the end of this month.
It is a tenuous hope at best. Some members of the far-right Freedom Caucus have already said that the impeachment inquiry is somehow not enough.
Beyond the immediate political calculus involving a federal budget and a shutdown, McCarthy’s greenlighting an impeachment inquiry without evidence of actual wrongdoing is highly problematic.
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy said on Tuesday.
The idea, pushed by many Republicans, that an inquiry needs to be launched to find the evidence of Biden’s supposed wrongdoing is, frankly, backwards.
Republicans have for years suggested that Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, have been engaged in a variety of unlawful and unethical deeds. Investigations have been launched into some of these claims, and so far, they have come up empty handed.
Is more investigation warranted? Perhaps. But an investigation of wrongdoing must be done and actual wrongdoing found before beginning impeachment proceedings.
Even some members of the Freedom Caucus agree.
“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden — if there’s evidence linking President Biden — to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Colorado Republican U.S. Rep. Ken Buck said before the inquiry was announced. “That doesn’t exist right now.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska has said for weeks that he believed evidence was needed before considering an impeachment inquiry.
“There should be a direct link to the president in some evidence,” he told the Hill in late August. “We should have some clear evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor, not just assuming there may be one. I think we need to have more concrete evidence to go down that path.”
On Tuesday, Bacon reiterated that he thought McCarthy’s move was premature and that a House vote to launch an inquiry should have been held. We agree that, at minimum, a vote of the full House is needed to give an impeachment inquiry any legitimacy.
We had the same criticism of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who moved to begin the first set of impeachment proceedings against then-President Donald Trump without a House vote. A full House vote was ultimately held and the proceedings, which centered on whether Trump improperly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to share information that Trump believed could harm Biden’s campaign for the presidency, moved forward.
As for Hunter Biden, who is a private citizen and not a member of the Biden administration, he was indicted by a special counsel on Thursday on felony gun charges. The case involves charges that Hunter Biden lied on gun purchase forms. These, and misdemeanor tax offenses, are serious allegations that warrant further investigation.
Unless and until there is evidence directly tying them to the president, they are, however, separate from Joe Biden’s presidency.
Impeachment has long been considered a political tool. This latest inquiry, however, has made a farce of what could be an important tool for presidential accountability.
