As Biden impeachment flails, GOP explores criminal referrals
Facing the prospect that they may never be able to impeach President Biden, House Republicans are exploring a pivot to a different strategy: issuing criminal referrals against him and those close to him.
In recent weeks, a political and factual reality has set in on Capitol Hill. Despite their subpoenas and depositions, House Republicans have been unable to produce any solid evidence of wrongdoing by Biden and lack the votes in their own party to charge him with high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment.
Instead, top GOP lawmak- ers have begun strategizing about making criminal refer- rals against Biden, members of his family and his associ- ates, essentially sending letters to the Justice Depart- ment urging prosecutors to investigate specific crimes they believe may have been committed.
The move would be largely symbolic, but it would allow Republicans in Congress to save face while ending their so far struggling impeach- ment inquiry. It has the added appeal for the GOP of aligning with former Presi- dent Donald Trump’s vow to prosecute Biden if he wins the election.
And it would avoid a repeat of the humiliating process House Republicans, who have a tiny and dwin- dling majority, went through last month with the impeach- ment of Alejandro Mayor- kas, the homeland security secretary. After initially falling short of the votes to impeach Mayorkas, Repub- licans barely succeeded on the second try, only to real- ize that the Democratic-controlled Senate was poised to quickly acquit him — or even dismiss the charges without a trial.
“There’s nothing that I’ve heard in the last couple of weeks that says that we are anywhere close to having the votes” for impeachment, said Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., and the author of the resolution authorizing the impeachment investigation.
Armstrong said he believed criminal referrals were the much more likely outcome. Armstrong sug- gested House Republicans could make referrals regard- ing alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act in connection with inter- national business deals by Hunter Biden, the presi- dent’s son, and suggested that the Justice Department investigate accusations of obstruction.
“I’m still interested in why we haven’t gotten better answers on the whole-of-gov- ernment approach to obstructing all of these investigations,” Armstrong said.
Republicans say they are not finished with their investigation and could still change course and decide to hold an impeachment vote. They have scheduled a pub- lic hearing next week with former business partners of Hunter Biden, though Hunter himself has refused to appear.
In an interview, Represen- tative Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the Judiciary Committee chairman, said he was also demanding audio recordings of President Biden that were part of the special-counsel investigation by Robert K. Hur into his handling of classified documents.
Criminal referrals, Jordan said, were among the options “on the table” as the House GOP moves forward.
Rep. James R. Comer, R-Ky., and chairman of the Oversight Committee, has repeatedly suggested in recent weeks that issu- ing criminal referrals could mark the end of the impeach- ment inquiry, rather than an impeachment vote.
“At the end of the day, what does accountability look like? It looks like criminal referrals. It looks like referring people to the Department of Justice,” Comer said in a recent interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
“If Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice won’t take any potential criminal referrals seriously, then maybe the next president, with a new attorney general, will.”
The shift to exploring criminal referrals came after Comer had what his aides say was a chance meeting last month with Trump in Florida. A spokeswoman for Comer would not comment on what was discussed, but said that while having lunch with Vernon Hill, a banker who has donated to Trump’s campaigns, the chairman unexpectedly ran into Trump and they had a 10-minute conversation.
The potential change in strategy also comes as Republicans have lost seats in the House, making impeachment all the more unlikely. With the departure next week of Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, the party will be down to 218 votes in the House, a bare majority of the 435-member body.
On Thursday, Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that Republican leaders were discussing the possibility of criminal referrals.
In a brief interview at the Capitol, he made clear that impeaching President Biden was not his top priority at the moment, saying he’d been “a little busy with appropriations.” But he said House leadership would consider whether to issue criminal referrals.