House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced Tuesday that he has endorsed an impeachment inquiry into President Biden and overseas business deals by Biden’s 53-year-old son Hunter.
“I am directing our House Committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy said at a news conference at the Capitol.
The Bidens have fostered a “culture of corruption,” McCarthy said, before rattling off a raft of financial figures he claimed are proof of wrongdoing.
McCarthy is pushing forward with the impeachment inquiry while bypassing a full House vote, something he specifically lambasted former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for doing when Donald Trump was president. The decision was a reversal for McCarthy, who previously said he would take a vote on the matter. Normally, it would require 218 votes to proceed, and it is unclear that McCarthy would have had enough support.
The move is a major shot across the bow by House Republicans, who have long made noise about Hunter Biden trading off his father’s name, without concrete evidence of any wrongdoing by the president. But opening an impeachment inquiry means the GOP would be able to obtain materials such as the Bidens’ bank records—which White House officials say is little more than a fool’s errand.
“This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public,” McCarthy said. “That’s exactly what we want to know—the answers.”
The probe, McCarthy said, will be led by Republican Reps. James Comer, Jim Jordan, and Jason Smith. The three have made no secret of their deep support for Trump, whose daughter and son-in-law earned up to $640 million from private ventures while on the White House payroll. Hunter Biden, on the other hand, is not a government employee.
Ian Sams, special assistant to the president and senior adviser and spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, took to X, formerly Twitter, to vent his frustrations.
“McCarthy is being told by Marjorie Taylor Greene to do impeachment, or else she’ll shut down the government,” Sams posted a few hours prior to McCarthy’s announcement. “Opening impeachment despite zero evidence of wrongdoing by POTUS is simply red meat for the extreme rightwing so they can keep baselessly attacking him. They admit it.”
An impeachment inquiry does not mean Biden is now being impeached. The inquiry is a first step, overseen by the House Judiciary Committee, and is meant to find out whether there is enough proof to bring articles of impeachment.
The move by McCarthy signals a capitulation to the most extreme elements of the Republican conference, who threatened to paralyze Washington by blocking a debt limit resolution if Biden were not investigated. Both sides of the aisle must hammer out a deal by Sept. 30.
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