AMAC Exclusive – By Katie Sullivan
It has now been nearly three months since then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. While House Republicans have continued to unearth shocking new evidence implicating Biden and members of the First Family in apparent bribery and pay-for-play schemes, Congress is also running up against pressing deadlines for government funding and other legislative priorities, leading new Speaker Mike Johnson to declare just before Thanksgiving that the inquiry is now at an “inflection point.”
Biden’s impeachment marks the 60th time that the House has initiated impeachment proceedings against an elected official. Those proceedings have resulted in 21 actual impeachments by the House and just eight convictions in the Senate – the latter of which have all been federal judges.
An impeachment inquiry is a powerful tool for holding high-ranking officials accountable because it allows lawmakers to subpoena witnesses and documents and conduct hearings to determine whether an official has committed “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors,” as outlined in the Constitution.
At issue in this investigation, according to the House Oversight Committee, is whether or not Joe Biden has leveraged his years in public service to enrich himself or members of his family. Throughout their inquiry, House Republicans have unearthed a growing web of links between members of Biden’s immediate family and foreign businesses that point to exactly such a conclusion.
For instance, Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has provided proof that, while Biden was vice president, several of his close family members received more than $15 million from foreign companies and foreign nationals in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, and China.
Bank records obtained by the Committee have also shown that Biden had on one occasion received a wire transfer of $200,000 from his brother, James Biden, on the same day that James received a suspicious payment of $600,000 from a failing rural hospital operator. In another eyebrow-raising transaction reported by the Committee, Chinese entities sent two wire transfers totaling $260,000 to Hunter Biden, but with Joe Biden’s Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address.
The Oversight Committee has also counted at least 16 times where Biden lied about not knowing about his family’s business dealings. Devon Archer, a business partner of First Son Hunter Biden, testified under oath earlier this year that Joe Biden attended Hunter’s business dinners with foreign actors while the elder Biden was vice president, and further suggested that Vice President Biden’s influence was part of what the foreign companies were paying Hunter for. The Archer testimony alleges that Joe Biden showed up on at least two dozen occasions to send signals of access, influence, and proximity to power to those Hunter sought to do business with.
There is also the troubling fact that Hunter Biden, a longtime drug addict, earned about $11 million from 2013 to 2018 as a member of the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, despite having no experience in the field.
According to Comer, a vast amount of evidence has been uncovered suggesting that “President Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain” and “Joe Biden allowed his family to sell him as ‘the brand’ around the world to enrich the Biden family.”
Although Democrats have alleged that Republicans haven’t yet proven any direct payments to Joe Biden for selling his influence (a claim that is itself debatable) law professor Jonathan Turley testified before the House in September that Republicans don’t actually need to prove such a direct link. Instead, Turley testified, even Biden using his office to enrich family members would itself be a crime rising to the level of a felony.
Turley was, however, careful to state that he does not yet believe Republicans have what they need to warrant a formal impeachment charge – but that they have uncovered enough to justify the current inquiry and further investigation.
But even the strongest evidence may not be enough to overcome the political realities in Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier this month that although the Biden impeachment inquiry has his “full and unwavering support,” it is also at an “inflection point” and needs more interviews with witnesses under oath.
The Biden White House, meanwhile, is doing its best to ensure those interviews never happen and to stop the House from obtaining more evidence. White House lawyers have rejected requests from Republicans to interview Biden staffers and family members, and the issue appears headed for a court battle.
The Biden team is likely hoping that the legislative calendar and looming funding battles in Congress will stave off further revelations for at least the rest of this year. Congress barely averted a government shutdown earlier this month, and is set for another funding showdown early next year. With an election year looming, Democrats are banking on Republicans simply not having the time or the political will to probe deeper into the Biden family’s corruption or hold the president accountable for the evidence of his wrongdoing that has already been uncovered.
As Trump’s two impeachments revealed and the impeachment inquiry into Biden has confirmed, the impeachment process itself has become (or maybe always was) inherently political.
In Trump’s case, Democrats had virtually no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump, and it showed – particularly in the case of Trump’s second impeachment in 2021, after he had already left office, when former Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed to even launch a formal inquiry. Democrats – and even some anti-Trump Republicans – all voted the party line anyway in a sham proceeding.
This time around, Republicans have uncovered seemingly damning evidence implicating Biden and the First Family in shady dealings with foreign interests, although the American people have yet to learn the full extent of it. But regardless, it currently seems almost unimaginable that any Democrat would break ranks and vote to impeach or remove Biden from office.
Republicans’ impeachment inquiry may then at best be considered a useful tool for convincing voters to do what elected Democrats won’t and remove Biden from office next year. That alone seems like a worthwhile reason to continue pressing for answers.
Katharine “Katie” Sullivan was an Acting Assistant Attorney General and a senior advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Trump. She previously served 11 years as a state trial court judge in Colorado.
