McCarthy Launches Biden Impeachment Inquiry—With Zero Evidence
The House speaker does not even have the full support of his own party on this.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, despite having zero evidence of wrongdoing by the president and not enough support from his own party.
The GOP has insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, although they have yet to provide any actual proof. McCarthy ordered House Republicans to proceed with the inquiry, despite promising less than two weeks ago that he would not open the probe without a vote.
McCarthy has previously said that an impeachment inquiry will help Republicans access more information and witnesses, which will supposedly lead them to evidence of Biden’s crimes. This is, of course, a bass-ackward way of going about things. As CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Representative Nancy Mace Monday night, “Isn’t it supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue an impeachment inquiry?”
McCarthy opted to order the inquiry because he doesn’t have the united support of his party. The move is incredibly hypocritical, as he had criticized then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi for impeaching Donald Trump the first time without first holding a vote. The House voted to formalize the impeachment a month later. It is unlikely that would happen this time around, since multiple Republicans are not on board with McCarthy’s plan.
House Republicans, led by the Oversight Committee, have conducted a months-long investigation into Biden. In that time, 60 administration officials have testified at committee hearings, and another eight have sat for transcribed interviews.
High-level officials in the FBI and Secret Service have briefed committee members. The Treasury provided more than 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports to the committee, and the FBI even gave Oversight the now-infamous FD-1023 form, despite serious misgivings about security issues.
Even Oversight Chair James Comer has admitted that he’s been able to access everything he wanted. “Every subpoena that I’ve signed as chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we’ve gotten 100% of what we’ve requested,” he told Fox Business in June. “Whether it’s with the FBI or with banks or with Treasury.”
In comparison, Donald Trump swore in 2019 that he would be “fighting all the subpoenas” for investigations into his actions. His administration refused to provide information for more than 100 congressional investigations, and Trump even sued his own accounting firm to try to block it from giving his tax records to Congress.
Republicans seem to have exhausted all other means of uncovering Biden’s supposed wrongdoing and are now launching a desperate final bid. But if they’ve come this far and still found nothing, that would seem to imply that there is nothing to be found.
This article has been updated.