The US House of Representatives approved on Wednesday December 13 the formal opening of an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, motivated by the controversial affairs of the president’s son abroad, but deemed completely unfounded by Democrats. This procedure has almost no chance of succeeding, but could turn into a headache for the White House before the presidential election in November 2024, in which Joe Biden is a candidate.
The Republicans “are choosing to waste their time with a baseless political scheme,” the American president reacted on Wednesday. “Instead of working to make Americans’ lives better, their priority is to attack me with lies,” the Democrat said in a statement.
The Republican camp, in the majority in the House of Representatives since January, accuses the Democratic leader of having used his influence when he was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017) to allow his son to do questionable business in China and Ukraine. “Joe Biden has repeatedly lied to the American people,” accused the head of the House investigative committee, James Comer, from the chamber.
The president, his son and the Democrats deny these accusations outright. “My father was never financially involved in my affairs,” brushed off Hunter Biden, who has become a favored target of the right, during a rare press conference on Wednesday. The fifty-year-old, with a past marked by addictions and charged in two cases by the courts, admitted to having made “mistakes” in his life. But he accused “the Trumpists” of trying to “dehumanize” him, to “harm” his father. For this reason, he refused to participate in a closed-door hearing organized by the Republicans, who had summoned him to appear at the Capitol on Wednesday. The president has always publicly supported Hunter Biden, often saying he is “proud” of him.
An investigation already opened this summer
An impeachment investigation, long demanded by elected officials close to Donald Trump, had already been opened against Joe Biden this summer. A first parliamentary hearing was even organized on the subject at the end of September, during which the experts interviewed agreed that there was currently nothing to justify an indictment of President Biden. “There is no evidence that President Biden committed any wrongdoing,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries added Wednesday.
The Republicans, however, believe that the formal opening of the investigation, adopted by their votes alone, will offer them additional powers, and therefore new possibilities to incriminate the Democratic leader. “The time has come to provide answers to the American people,” said the Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Johnson, on Wednesday after the vote, assuring that he would not take this investigation “lightly.”
The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress can impeach the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” and the process takes place in two stages. After carrying out its investigation, the House of Representatives votes, by a simple majority, on articles of impeachment detailing the facts alleged against the president: this is what is called “impeachment” in English. If the indictment were to be voted on, the Senate, the upper house of Congress, would then put the president on trial. However, he would very likely be acquitted, Joe Biden’s party being in the majority in this chamber.
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.
