US President Joe Biden, targeted by an impeachment investigation led by the Republican opposition in Congress, has “done nothing wrong”, his spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday. Republicans in the House of Representatives accuse the Democratic leader of “lying” to the American people about his involvement in his son’s controversial overseas business.
“They found no evidence, none, that he did anything wrong. The president did nothing wrong,” his spokesperson retorted during the daily White House press briefing. Hunter Biden, the fifty-year-old son of the Democratic president, has become a favorite target of the American right. They accuse him in particular of having made questionable deals in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017), capitalizing on his father’s networks and name.
The opening of impeachment proceedings had been demanded for months by the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party. The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress can impeach the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Democrats respond that these right-wing efforts are only smokescreens used to hide the legal troubles that are piling up for Donald Trump, indicted four times in less than six months.
Never has a president been impeached in American history. Three were impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. But all were ultimately acquitted. Richard Nixon preferred to resign in 1974 to avoid certain impeachment by Congress due to the Watergate scandal.
