The House is set to vote Wednesday to authorize its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, which is expected to pass, teeing up a more heightened battle between Republicans and the president and his family than what has been seen over the last couple of months.
Since September, when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced the House would open an impeachment inquiry, the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Ways and Means committees have led the investigation into Biden.
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But one of the biggest knocks by the White House and Democrats has been that the inquiry was not authorized by a majority of the House. Rather, it was unilaterally created and, therefore, weakens the GOP’s powers to enforce demands for witness testimony and documents.
Republicans say the administration is using that argument to stonewall them on subpoenas and requests for information. So, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) decided to put the inquiry up for a full vote in hopes that if it passes, Republicans will be able to proceed with more legal fortitude.
The inquiry is examining three main items: whether Biden improperly used his position of power to enrich himself and his family, whether he used his influence to pressure the Department of Justice to avoid prosecuting his son Hunter Biden for certain charges, and how involved Joe Biden was in his family’s foreign business dealings.
A top focus of this is an allegation raised in an FBI tip sheet that said Joe and Hunter Biden took bribes from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company for which Hunter Biden was a board member, in exchange for then-Vice President Biden pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor.
So far, the committees have not produced conclusive evidence to prove existing allegations, a point some Republican members openly admit but hope that by authorizing an impeachment inquiry, they can gather information to prove or dismiss those allegations.
And some members don’t think any proof of high crimes or misdemeanors will come from the inquiry, though impeachment articles can include noncriminal activity.
“Frankly, my thought is, and I may be an outlier on this, I think it’s more important to have this information for the elections. Let the voters decide,” centrist Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said. “I don’t know that you’re going to see a high crime or misdemeanor, but I think the voters deserve to know what did the Bidens do with $25 million. Where did it come in from? Where did it go? I think the voters should know what’s going on.”
A concern for some centrists and a talking point for Democrats is that if an impeachment inquiry is authorized, it would become inevitable that articles of impeachment would be drafted and that the House would vote on them.
Johnson tried to quash those fears on Tuesday, saying he is “not making a political decision” but rather a “legal decision” without a predetermined outcome.
“We can’t prejudge the outcome. The Constitution does not permit us to do so,” he said at his weekly press conference. “We have to follow the truth where it takes us, and that is exactly what we’re going to do.”
If the impeachment inquiry resolution passes, an accompanying resolution known as a “sidecar” will also be adopted to address the process of subpoenaing witnesses for the inquiry.
The Washington Examiner had numerous conversations with senior GOP aides to understand their expectations for how the inquiry would transpire in the wake of the sidecar’s passage.
The aides conveyed confidence that they are already on sturdy legal ground to enforce their subpoenas, but the sidecar, they said, will allow them to avoid back-and-forth legal fights about the subpoenas, saving time and resources.
The sidecar specifically names two DOJ Tax Division officials, senior litigation counsel Mark Daly and trial attorney Jack Morgan, whom Republicans subpoenaed in September. The pair did not appear for their depositions after the DOJ instructed them not to.
Republicans then accused the DOJ in a public report of making a “bad-faith attempt” to delay the depositions.
The DOJ has said in letters to Congress on the matter that it has a long-standing policy that it does not want line-level employees, including Daly and Morgan, testifying, especially about open investigations, such as the DOJ’s Hunter Biden case.
Republicans, however, wrote in their report that the DOJ’s reasons for withholding Daly and Morgan were “wholly inadequate” and argued that the DOJ has, in the past, provided Congress with certain information about current investigations, as well as allowed lower-level employees to testify.
Republicans plan to pursue litigation against Daly and Morgan to compel their testimony in the weeks following the sidecar becoming effective unless the DOJ reverses course and decides to cooperate with the subpoenas.
Republicans also subpoenaed Hunter Biden to appear for a deposition on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., but at the time of this publishing, they remain uncertain about whether the first son will show. His attorney Abbe Lowell told Congress his client would only appear for a public hearing and not a closed-door deposition.
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Other witnesses Republicans have subpoenaed as part of their inquiry, including Joe Biden’s brother James Biden and former Biden family business partner Rob Walker, have engaged in cooperative exchanges with Congress to negotiate terms of their appearances.
Republicans have expressed optimism that they will be able to speak with James Biden and Walker and have conveyed they expect a substantial portion of witness testimony to occur in January, though how long the overall impeachment inquiry lasts remains unknown.
