Biden impeachment inquiry grinds on
WASHINGTON — The House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden is at a crossroad, lacking the political appetite from within the Republican ranks to go forward with an actual impeachment, but facing political pressure to deliver after months of work.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer, pushed ahead at Wednesday’s public hearing, claiming that the Democratic president was either “complicit” in his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings selling the Biden brand or “incompetent.”
But having produced no hard evidence of presidential wrongdoing by Biden, Comer has signaled an interest in taking the inquiry into another direction. Stopping short of drawing up articles of impeachment, he is instead eyeing potential criminal referrals of the Biden family to the Justice Department, a largely symbolic act.
With Hunter Biden declining to appear at the hearing after having testified privately last month, the Kentucky lawmaker Comer said earlier on Fox News he planned “multiple” criminal referrals.
It’s the start of a potential winding down for the lengthy Gop-led probe that was launched after Republicans seized control of the House in January and were eager to hold Biden to the high bar of impeachment. The House, under a Democratic majority, had twice impeached Republican Donald Trump during his presidency.
As Trump and Biden face another likely rematch this November, Comer is weighing whether to keep the impeachment inquiry going through Hunter Biden’s often complicated business dealings and troubled personal life or wrap up work even if that falls short of impeachment.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said in his own opening remarks that a “comedy of errors” of the Biden impeachment inquiry is finally “crashing to an end.”
The White House has called the inquiry a “charade” and told Republicans to “move on.”
The committee asserts that the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.
Hunter Biden, who is facing firearm and tax charges in separate matters, testified behind
closed doors last month in a deposition that filled more than 200 pages but left Comer’s committee without evidence rising to “high crimes and misdemeanors” that would be expected to impeach a president.
“My father’s never been involved with my business,” Hunter Biden testified.
Testimony was coming from a cast of unusual witnesses, some with complicated backgrounds.
Jason Galanis is serving a lengthy federal prison sentence in Alabama for fraud schemes and appeared remotely before lawmakers. Tony Bobulinski, a onetime business associate of Hunter Biden, took his claims
against the family public during the first Trump-biden presidential debate in 2020.
The Democrats called Lev Parnas to testify, relying on the convicted businessman who was central to Trump’s first impeachment as a Rudy Giuliani associate working to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden before the 2020 election. Parnas has since played a key role in dispelling the House GOP’S main claim of bribery against the Bidens.
Testifying via video, Galanis told lawmakers he expected to make “billions” with Hunter Biden and other associates, using the Biden family name in their foreign business dealings.
Galanis described a particular time in May 2014 when Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone for a brief chat with potential foreign business partners — a Russian oligarch and her husband — during a party at a New York restaurant.
But Hunter Biden directly rebuffed involvement with Galanis in his own deposition, testifying that he met Galanis for about 30 minutes 10 years ago.