2023-12-07T18:37:18+00:00
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/ Today, Thursday, the Republican Party in the House of Representatives issued a resolution to formalize its months-long investigation into the impeachment of President Biden, and a full vote is scheduled in the House of Representatives next week.
The resolution authorizing the investigation — which was issued months after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced the launch of an impeachment inquiry in September — comes as three of the committee leaders overseeing the investigations enter a more combative phase of their investigations. While trying to dispute witnesses and documents.
It says the committees are “directed to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the House inquiry into whether there are sufficient grounds for the House to exercise its constitutional authority to impeach Joseph Biden.”
Republicans hope that formally authorizing the investigation will increase the legal weight behind the investigation and their ability to enforce evidence, especially if any of those fights end up in court.
While responding to subpoenas and interview requests in November, the White House said the House GOP impeachment inquiry into Trump was unconstitutional because it had not been formalized by a vote of the full chamber.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters this week that while the GOP disagreed with that assessment, the White House letter helped push the House GOP to formalize the investigation.
“Constitutionally, this is not required. The Speaker of the House said we are,” Jordan said [في] “An impeachment inquiry, and then we’re in an impeachment inquiry.” “But if you have a vote in the full House and a majority says we’re in this formal status as part of our overall oversight work or constitutional duty of oversight that we have, that only helps us in court.”
In anticipation of that vote, Democrats and the White House in recent days have pointed to previous statements from Republicans and moderates who have cast doubt on whether impeachment is warranted.
They also pointed to the outcry from Republicans when impeachment proceedings against then-US President Trump began without a formal vote.
But many GOP members themselves say taking the step of authorizing an investigation is a much different question than voting on actual articles of impeachment.
The White House responded to the investigation resolution by saying that House Republicans were “just focused on stupid stunts.”
“This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality, but rather in the shameful desire of extremist House Republicans to abuse their power to smear President Biden,” Ian Sams, White House spokesman for Oversight and Investigations, said in a statement.
“The American people will once again see a clear contrast in priorities: a President Biden who is focused on solving the challenges facing America and the world, and extreme Republicans in the House of Representatives who are focused only on stupid stunts to attract attention to themselves,” Sams added. He said.
The House Judiciary, Oversight, and Ways and Means committees have been investigating the Biden family’s finances for months and the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes.
Thursday’s decision makes little reference to their work, instead setting ground rules for how evidence should be managed and the need to draft a report on their findings.
But the investigation had difficulties linking the president to his son’s activities, and they failed to prove their most salacious allegation, which would be the most important in impeachment: that the president accepted a bribe.
Much of this investigation relies on information that was first circulated during Trump’s impeachment, after he pressured Ukrainian officials to hand over damaging information to his rival.
The narrative that President Biden pushed Ukraine to fire a prosecutor to help his son, who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burimsa, has been largely debunked.
Biden’s efforts to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor while serving as vice president came on the advice of the State Department and the international community, which accused prosecutors of failing to address corruption.