Republican lawmakers charged in the 291-page report that Joe Biden should be impeached for “egregious” conduct — though they offered no evidence the president committed a crime — but the report’s impact has been significantly weakened by his withdrawal from the presidential race.
In what was meant to be a central theme of Republican efforts to block Biden’s reelection, the report alleges that Biden was the architect and beneficiary of a lucrative influence scheme spearheaded by his son Hunter and brother James.
The report, the culmination of a months-long impeachment investigation by three Republican-led House committees – Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means – was released just as the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, with Vice President Kamala Harris, not Biden, now the leading candidate.
“Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that President Biden participated in a conspiracy to enrich his family through public office,” the report states. “President Biden’s participation in this conspiracy to enrich his family is impeachable conduct.”
He added, “The full extent of the misconduct uncovered by the Commission is egregious. President Joe Biden conspired to induce and defraud. In doing so, he misled the United States to enrich his family by abusing the power of his office and repeatedly lying about his abuse of power.”
But the report presents no evidence that Biden committed a crime and does not appear to meet the constitutional definition of “high crimes and misconduct” required for impeachment of a sitting president.
The document’s authors implicitly acknowledged these shortcomings but justified them by pointing to the grounds on which Democrats impeached then-President and now Republican nominee Donald Trump in 2019 after he was accused of trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek incriminating evidence against the Biden family in exchange for military aid.
“Even if, as some have argued, the Bidens were merely selling the ‘illusion’ of influence and access, there may still be an abuse of power,” the report said.
“In 2019, House Democrats argued that impeachable offenses do not necessarily need to rise to the level of criminal conduct. Thus, the House could impeach President Biden for non-criminal conduct that seriously undermines the political system or betrays the public trust.”
The panel’s leaders must decide whether to put the issue to a vote in the plenary session, knowing that with Biden now a lame-duck president and the political stakes lowered, he may not have the votes needed to win.
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Biden dropped out of the Democratic presidential nomination on July 21 after his poor debate performance undermined party confidence that he could win the presidency, meaning the political value of impeaching him is limited.
Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers, eager to maintain their party’s slim majority in the House, have privately acknowledged that the evidence against Biden is thin and are reluctant to move forward.
The investigation was launched last September by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who faced pressure from Republican hardliners before being ousted by a Republican rebellion and subsequently resigned from Congress, and was supported by McCarthy’s successor, Speaker Mike Johnson.
Even if Biden is impeached by a House vote, he is unlikely to be removed from office by a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which Democrats currently control by one seat.