Biden impeachment inquiry: Republican document demands signal possible court battle
WASHINGTON — House Republicans will gather Thursday for a closed-door briefing on the status of the newly launched impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which is expected to feature a deluge of demands for records that may ultimately be settled by the court system.
The chairmen of the three committees leading the formal probe will outline plans to scour bank records, diplomatic files, flight manifests and emails registered to Biden’s pseudonyms to determine the extent of his role in his son and brother’s dealings in countries such as China and Ukraine.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) launched the rare impeachment process Tuesday, saying that evidence shows that Biden lied about his involvement in first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden’s ventures.
Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who has led months-long probes of Biden’s role in foreign ventures, will brief most of the 222-member GOP conference alongside Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and tax-focused Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who have handled inquiries into an alleged Justice Department coverup.
The sprawling inquiry is expected to feature aggressive demands for records dating to Biden’s eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president— with litigation to enforce subpoenas ready, if necessary.
“We know that someone was paying a big chunk of Joe’s expenses because he lives way beyond his means,” a source close to McCarthy told The Post.
“One objective of the inquiry is to determine whether Ukrainian or Russian oligarchs or the Chinese Communist Party are his benefactors, using Jim and Hunter Biden as conduits to launder the money.”
A prominent House Republican aide told The Post that fence-sitting Republicans are “already” are being swayed toward supporting the inquiry.
Another Hill source said that Comer will outline “evidence the Oversight Committee has uncovered about President Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling schemes and progress made to hold the DOJ accountable for misconduct in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation.”
Comer’s remarks will focus on “progress made since Republicans last met in July.”
There’s evidence that the president interacted with his relatives’ associates in nearly all of their lucrative dealings, including dining twice in Washington with Hunter’s Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakhstani associates, hosting Mexican associates at the vice president’s residence, participating in 20 speakerphone calls with Hunter’s partners and meeting in-person with Hunter and James’ associates from two distinct ventures with Chinese government-linked entities.
Biden said in June that he stands by his claims that he has “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings.”
Hunter, now 53, wrote in a message retrieved from his abandoned laptop that he had to give “half” of his income to his dad and Comer in May described nine Biden family members who allegedly received foreign income. There is also evidence Hunter paid at least some of Joe’s bills, including for phone service.
Republicans have not yet proven whether Joe Biden directly financially benefited, however, from the foreign revenue streams or whether Hunter and James in fact covered a large portion of his living expenses.
The Oversight Committee on Tuesday said it would subpoena the bank records of Hunter and James Biden — after tracing the flow of some foreign funds, including millions from China and Romania, through the bank records of their business partner Rob Walker.
The panel held off demanding Biden family bank records earlier this year for fear of a contentious court battle.
The launch of the impeachment inquiry will strengthen the House’s position if there is a legal challenge over those bank records.
McCarthy said last month that Republicans may ultimately request the president’s own bank statements to see if he received foreign income.
The Oversight Committee has for months built up a litany of largely unanswered requests for documents. In a new request on Tuesday, it demanded the State Department detail the evolution of US policy toward Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, whom the president has said he got fired in 2016 by using US foreign aid as leverage.
Recently reported documents indicated other US officials were surprised by Biden conditioning US aid on Shokin’s removal in early 2016 and an FBI informant file released in July said the owner of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, claimed in 2016 he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in exchange for the then-vice president’s help ousting Shokin.
Burisma paid Hunter Biden up to $1 million per year beginning in April 2014, when his father assumed control of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy and the company’s board adviser Vadym Pozharsyi dined with the then-vice president in DC in April 2015.
Biden has argued Shokin was fired for his own corruption and called the bribery allegation “malarkey” in June, asking, “Where’s the money?”
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, whose office has led a criminal investigation of Hunter Biden that could soon result in indictments for tax gun, illegal gun possession and other crimes, has refused to provide Congress with information about the Burisma bribery allegation, saying in July that it’s part of an “ongoing investigation.”
The National Archives, meanwhile, has been targeted for some of the most potentially explosive requests, including the roughly 5,400 documents — mainly emails — from Biden’s vice presidency in which he uses the pseudonyms “Robert L. Peters” and “Robin Ware.”
The Archives missed an Aug. 31 deadline to hand over the emails and has not yet supplied documents in response to other Oversight Committee requests, including for Joe Biden’s official calendars as vice president and Air Force Two flight manifests that feature Hunter Biden and his business partners.
Only five previous presidents have been subjected to an impeachment inquiry, which increases the power of Congress to acquire documents through the court system if executive-branch agencies don’t comply.
Presidents John Tyler and Richard Nixon weren’t ultimately impeached — in Nixon’s case because he resigned in 1974 after Republicans began to support his ouster following the court-ordered release of recordings that proved he was involved in covering up the Watergate break-in.
The Biden impeachment inquiry is distinct from others over the past century — against Nixon, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — because it focuses on an array of alleged misconduct by Biden, rather than specific actions, and the alleged conduct occurred largely in the years preceding his presidency.
The Constitution says that the House can impeach a president for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” and a decision on whether to do so is left up to members of Congress.
The Senate must convict a president by a two-thirds vote — a high threshold that’s resulted in acquittal four times and no removals from office.
McCarthy launched the inquiry without a promised floor vote after a handful of Republicans said the House’s focus should remain on spending cuts ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline and others said they were unaware of evidence that would justify impeachment proceedings.
Republicans hold a narrow edge in the House, meaning that only five defectors could sink eventual articles of impeachment.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday said the inquiry was “baseless” and White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams issued a “memo to editorial leadership” at major new outlets claiming that the inquiry has “no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong,” which “should set off alarm bells for news organizations.”
Sams has highlighted GOP House members recently expressing qualms about the inquest, including Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) saying he was “not seeing facts or evidence at this point” and Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) saying, “There is a constitutional and legal test that you have to meet with evidence. I have not seen that evidence, but I guess I’m not suggesting it doesn’t exist.”
The Oversight Committee on Wednesday published a list of 22 instances in which Joe Biden allegedly played a role in his family’s foreign dealings, in most cases while he steered US policy as vice president.
