U.S. President Joe Biden disembarks Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Aug. 18.Daniel Becerril/Reuters
House Republicans have released their initial impeachment inquiry report on U.S. President Joe Biden, alleging an abuse of power and obstruction of justice in the financial dealings of his son Hunter Biden and family associates.
The nearly year-long inquiry by Republicans stops short of alleging any criminal wrongdoing by the President. Instead, the almost 300-page report out Monday, the opening day of the Democratic National Convention, covers familiar ground, asserting the Biden family traded on its “brand” in business ventures in corrupt ways that rise to the Constitution’s high bar for impeachment.
With Mr. Biden no longer running for re-election, next steps are highly uncertain. House Republicans have not had support from their own ranks to actually impeach the President, and removal by the Senate is even further afield. Many Republicans prefer to focus attention on the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris, with some probes getting under way.
The White House has dismissed the House impeachment inquiry as a “stunt” and encouraged House Republicans to “move on.”
“The totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the Committees is egregious,” wrote the House oversight and accountability, judiciary, and ways and means panels leading the inquiry.
The report said the Constitution’s “remedy for a President’s flagrant abuse of office is clear: impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal by the Senate.”
Republicans have spent the better part of their time in the House majority with a hyper focus on Mr. Biden and his family’s businesses, encouraged by Donald Trump as the twice-impeached and indicted former president makes a comeback bid for the White House.
The impeachment inquiry has been a cornerstone of the House GOP’s effort, launched by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy shortly before he was booted from leadership and formalized in December under new Speaker Mike Johnson. Republicans are investigating many aspects of Biden family finances going back to 2009, when he was vice-president to Barack Obama.
In a statement Monday, Mr. Johnson was non-committal on what the House will do with the findings. “We encourage all Americans to read this report,” he said.
Through bank records, interviews with some 30 witnesses, whistle-blower accounts and millions of documents, House Republicans allege a years-long practice by Hunter Biden and his associates to solicit foreign business deals using the family’s proximity to power in Washington.
Much of the focus of the report is not on Joe Biden’s time as President, but on the years when the Biden family was in turmoil after the 2015 death of his oldest son, Beau, and as the vice-president was bowing out of elected office, declining to run for president in 2016.
Hunter Biden has acknowledged a serious addiction to crack in those years. He was convicted in June of felony gun charges and is set to stand trial next month on federal tax charges.
Former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer, who was sentenced to a year in prison in 2022 in another matter, told the committee, “At the end of the day, part of what was delivered is the brand.”
To tie the elder Mr. Biden to his son’s actions, the Republicans rely on a series of phone calls and pop-by dinner meeting visits Joe Biden made while Hunter was conducting business. At times, Hunter would put his dad on speakerphone for his guests as the father and son exchanged pleasantries.
The Bidens are a famously tight-knit family and acknowledge they speak almost daily, including during this time, with the father checking on his son’s well-being.
In his own defiant closed-door deposition to House investigators, Hunter Biden insisted he did not involve his father in his business.
All told, the House Republicans allege the Biden family and its associates received some US$27-million in business payments from partners or clients in Russia, China and other countries. They allege an additional US$8-million in loans, including some from Hunter Biden benefactor Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer, and question the purchases of the son’s artwork.
The report said it is “inconceivable” that Joe Biden did not understand what was going on.
“President Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family,” the report claims.
Mr. Biden himself declined a request to testify before the House.
Touchbacks to Mr. Trump’s impeachments at the hands of Democrats run throughout the report’s pages as Republicans work to contrast his grounds for removal to the Biden family’s dealings and “grift.”
But the differences are stark, as the indicted Mr. Trump faces actual criminal charges, including in the conspiracy to overturn Mr. Biden’s 2020 election and draw supporters to Washington on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
The report also accuses Mr. Biden of obstructing justice in the probe, revisiting previously aired complaints about the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Hunter Biden. Attorney-General Merrick Garland has forcefully denied those accusations, defending the department against claims of political influence.
The report focuses heavily on what Republicans have long alleged was a pattern of “slow-walking” investigative steps and delaying enforcement actions to the benefit of the President’s son.
But the report provides no evidence that Mr. Biden had any involvement in his son’s investigation, which was launched under Mr. Trump’s presidency and has been led by a Delaware U.S. attorney appointed by Mr. Trump. The U.S. attorney, David Weiss, was kept on by Mr. Garland to insulate the probe from claims of political interference.
Mr. Garland has insisted that no one at the White House gave him or other senior officials at the Justice Department direction about the handling of the Hunter Biden investigation.
Beyond Hunter Biden, the report includes details of the involvement of Joe Biden’s brother James in the various family businesses.
Republicans have pointed to a series of payments that they claim show the President benefited from his brother’s work. They point to a US$200,000 personal cheque from James to Joe on the same day in 2018 that James received an equal amount from Americore, a health care company.
House Democrats have defended the transaction, pointing to bank records they say indicate James was repaying a loan provided by his brother, who had wire-transferred US$200,000 to him about six weeks earlier. The money changed hands while Joe Biden was a private citizen.
Short of impeaching the President, the House Republicans have issued criminal referrals recommending the Justice Department prosecute Hunter and James, accusing them of making false statements to Congress as part of the GOP investigation. Lawyers for those men have argued those claims are baseless or a distraction.
Until recently, the President had been a focal point for Republicans in Congress, but his decision last month to drop out of the presidential race and Ms. Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket have forced GOP leaders to re-evaluate their marquee investigation.
A year ago, GOP lawmakers had hoped the Biden inquiry would build a strong enough case for impeachment’s “high crimes and misdemeanours.” But the longer the inquiry dragged and the little direct evidence against Mr. Biden investigators were able to produce in public hearings or even in closed-door sessions, the more concerns grew from moderate Republicans wary of a vote on the matter.
The report released Monday makes more than 20 mentions of the “Biden-Harris administration,” while previous releases from the committees investigating Mr. Biden typically only made direct references to him.
And while Ms. Harris is not mentioned on her own in the report, the same committees leading the inquiry have begun to open new probes into her and her vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz.