The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, announced on Tuesday that he was launching an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden over his son’s controversial affairs abroad.
“I am asking a House committee to open a formal impeachment investigation,” said the Republican congressional head of the lower house of Congress. He said he believed the president, a Democrat, had “lied” to the American people.
The White House immediately denounced the investigation, launched just over a year before the 2024 presidential election, accusing Republicans of resorting to the “worst kind of extreme political manoeuvring.”
'No evidence of wrongdoing'
The US Constitution states that Congress can impeach the president for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours.”
House Republicans, who have held a majority since January, are conducting a series of parliamentary investigations into the affairs of Joe Biden’s younger son, Hunter. McCarthy said they had "uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”
“Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings,” the speaker added.
Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, responded on social network X, formerly Twitter, that “House Republicans have been investigating the President for nine months, and they've turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.”
Hunter Biden, a favourite target of the American right
Mc Carthy's "own GOP (Republican) members have said so," Sams added.
The investigation has virtually no chance of leading to Joe Biden’s impeachment, as his party has a majority in the Senate, the chamber that would be called upon to try the president if he were indicted in the House of Representatives.
Hunter Biden, a 53-year-old former businessman, has become a favourite target of the American right. Republicans accuse him in particular of having made dubious deals in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017), capitalising on his father’s networks and name.
The 80-year-old president has always publicly supported his son, who has a history of drug addiction and is also in trouble with the law, accused of illegally possessing a firearm.
Supporting impeachment could prove suicidal for swing-state legislators
The opening of impeachment proceedings has been called for for months by the Trumpist wing of the Republican party, with which Kevin McCarthy had to make numerous compromises to become Speaker in January 2023.
However, several moderate Reublican legislators are opposed to the opening of this investigation, for fear of being caught up in a purely partisan exercise. Moreover, supporting the impeachment effort could prove suicidal for legislators who are up for re-election next year in swing states that Biden won in the 2022 presidential elections.
The investigation will be steered in particular by James Comer, head of the House Investigative Committee, and Jim Jordan, head of the Judiciary Committee. Both are political allies of Kevin McCarthy, 58.
