Facing immense pressure from his far-right flank, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday that he is ordering House committees to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, despite Republicans having uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Still, in remarks outside of his Capitol Hill office, the California Republican made grandiose claims suggesting that Biden, while vice president, orchestrated an influence-peddling scheme to benefit himself and particularly his son Hunter Biden. “These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption,” McCarthy said, “and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives.”
While McCarthy previously said he would put the inquiry to a floor vote (as the House has in past impeachment probes), he reversed course Tuesday by declaring that he was unilaterally “directing” three House committees—Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means—to formally investigate the president. The move will grant House investigators heightened subpoena powers to obtain and sift through banking records, communications, and other documents belonging to Biden, his son, and other family members. It also means that Republicans will no longer have to feign a legislative obligation in order to investigate the president.
The Speaker, according to Punchbowl News, has plans to sell the inquiry to members during a special conference meeting on Thursday. Backing McCarthy’s pitch will be House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan and House Oversight chairman James Comer, with the latter having spent months leading an investigation into the president and his family.
His leadership notwithstanding, McCarthy may not have the horses to actually pass articles of impeachment, which would require a simple majority of 218 votes. In fact, it seems as though McCarthy chose not to put the inquiry up to a vote over fears that it would fail and hamper GOP momentum. Republicans only outnumber Democrats in the House by 10 members, and several Republicans have already questioned whether there is sufficient proof to impeach Biden. Last week, on evidentiary grounds, Republican congressman Ken Buck, a member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, argued against his party’s pursuit of impeachment. “There is not a strong connection at this point between the evidence on Hunter Biden and any evidence connecting the president,” Buck, a Judiciary member, said on MSNBC Sunday.
McCarthy, meanwhile, has had to contend with the members of his party who are out for blood. Republican congressman Matt Gaetz even warned last week that McCarthy could lose the Speakership should he get in the way. (Under a rule change that McCarthy agreed to in January, only one member is needed to trigger a vote to expel the Speaker.) Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene—a McCarthy-allied impeachment hawk who recently tore into Gaetz for taking credit for the impeachment push—took a different approach: The Georgia firebrand threatened to oppose funding measures that would avoid a government shutdown unless the House voted in favor of an impeachment inquiry. To avert a shutdown, Congress will have to vote on a funding package by September 30.
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In preparation for impeachment proceedings, Democrats on Capitol Hill are prepping a vigorous defense of the president, which is likely to be led by Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. “The Constitution says that the standard for impeachment is treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. They don’t have anything like that,” the Maryland lawmaker told fellow Democrats in a Sunday strategy session, per a source who spoke to NBC News. “The impetus here, of course, is just to do the political bidding of Donald Trump.” On Monday, Raskin published a 14-page memo slamming Republicans’ effort to investigate Biden, calling it “a complete and total bust.”
