Washington:

The White House on Wednesday rejected “baseless” allegations of wrongdoing against US President Joe Biden after Republican lawmakers launched an impeachment inquiry against him.

While the 80-year-old Democrat remained silent when asked by reporters about the probe, his spokeswoman pushed back against the investigation by his political foes.

“They have spent all year investigating the president… and have turned up with no evidence, none, that he did anything wrong,” Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

“That’s because the president didn’t do anything wrong.”

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy bowed to intense pressure from his party’s hard right and authorized the launch on Tuesday of an impeachment investigation.

Republican House members accuse Biden, a Democrat, of having “lied” to the American people about his son Hunter’s controversial business dealings abroad.

But Jean-Pierre said Republicans did not even have enough support for a vote in the House to approve an impeachment probe.

“Even House Republicans have said the evidence does not exist,” she said. “This is a political stunt.”

The probe comes as Biden faces low poll ratings ahead of a likely rematch with former president Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election.

Biden ignored impeachment questions from reporters at the White House while leading a meeting of his “Cancer Cabinet” which aims to eradicate the disease, part of a recent effort by the administration to put the focus back on his domestic agenda.

– ‘Good things’ –

Cancer is personal for Biden, whose eldest son Beau died from brain cancer aged 46 in 2015. Biden had a cancerous skin lesion removed in February while doctors removed two from First Lady Jill Biden a month before.

Biden has stood resolutely by his sole surviving son, Hunter, 53.

The younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president under Barack Obama have been a constant target of Republicans.

Hunter Biden, a recovering drug addict, is currently under investigation by a Justice Department special counsel for possible tax evasion and is expected to be charged by the end of this month on a firearms violation.

However, he has not been charged with crimes related to his foreign business dealings, and no credible evidence has emerged so far that the president was involved in anything illegal.

The probe however threatens to distract the White House and give Republicans fresh material for attacks ahead of the November 2024 election.

Biden holds a slim one-percent lead over Trump — 47 percent to 46 — in a hypothetical match-up, according to a new national poll by Quinnipiac University.

Half of voters thought Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business dealings with China and Ukraine, while 35 percent thought the president did something illegal, the poll found.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

Republican lawmakers launched an investigation Tuesday into the possible impeachment of President Joe Biden, but such a prospect remains highly unlikely.

Republican House members accuse Biden, a Democrat, of having “lied” to the American people about his son Hunter’s controversial business dealings abroad.

Here are points to understand what may lie ahead.

– What is the procedure? –

The Constitution provides that Congress may impeach a president in the event of “treason, bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Impeachment by the House — the political equivalent of a criminal indictment — would spark a “trial” by the Senate.

It is a two-stage process. First, the lower House of Representatives conducts a vote by a simple majority on articles of impeachment detailing the charges against the president.

In the event of approval, the Senate puts the president on trial. At the end of the debate, the 100 senators vote on each article. A two-thirds majority is required to convict, in which case impeachment is automatic and final. Otherwise, the president is acquitted.

No president has ever been removed from office by impeachment. While Donald Trump was in office, the House approved articles of impeachment in 2019 and again in 2021. Both times, the Senate acquitted.

The US Senate is controlled today by Democrats, making Biden’s impeachment improbable.

– Why now? –

The Trumpist wing of the Republican Party has pushed for Biden’s impeachment since his 2020 election.

After securing a majority in the House this year, Republican lawmakers say they have “serious and credible allegations” against Biden, Speaker Kevin McCarthy now says.

McCarthy won his job back in January by making a series of deals with the hard-right lawmakers.

“McCarthy is doing this for a very simple reason: If he doesn’t, he’ll be replaced as Speaker,” political scientist Larry Sabato told AFP.

The Democrats, for their part, say any impeachment inquiry allows Trump to turn the House of Representatives into an arm of his 2024 presidential election.

An impeachment inquiry, meantime, would distract attention from the massive legal troubles weighing on Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges that will play out in four trials over the coming year.

– What are the consequences? –

“My guess is that this will backfire on the Republicans,” predicts Sabato, who says “there is thin, if any, evidence” for their claims about Biden.

Yet Biden’s image of rectitude could be tarnished by the televised hearings on his son’s affairs.

On another front, lawmakers have knives out for a pending battle over Republican demands for major budget cuts. If lawmakers cannot agree on spending bills to fund the US government by a September 30 deadline, the government will slowly shut down.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy delivers a statement on allegations surrounding U.S. President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden as the House of Representatives returns from its summer break facing a looming deadline to avoid a government shutdown while spending talks continue on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. on September 12, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on September 12 called for an impeachment inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden encouraged by his party’s right flank — a move certain to further divide lawmakers as they struggle to passing legislation to avoid a government shutdown.

“I am directing our House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters.

Many in Mr. McCarthy’s party were infuriated when the House, then controlled by Democrats, twice impeached Republican President Donald Trump — in 2019 and 2021 — though he was acquitted both times in the Senate.

Mr. Biden, who defeated Mr. Trump in the 2020 election, is seeking re-election next year. Republicans, who now narrowly control the House, have accused Mr. Biden of profiting while he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017 from his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures, though they have not presented substantiation.

A former business associate of the younger Biden told an House hearing that Hunter Biden sold the “illusion” of access to power while his father was vice president, according to a transcript released last month.

The White House has said there is no basis for an investigation and Mr. Biden has mocked Republicans over a possible impeachment.

Democrats have sought to portray Republican impeachment talk as an effort to distract public attention from the legal woes of Mr. Trump, who faces four separate criminal indictments while running for his party’s nomination to face Mr. Biden in the 2024 U.S. election.

Mr. Trump has pressed Republicans to try to remove Mr. Biden from office. Several hard-right Republicans have said they will not vote for must-pass spending bills unless Mr. McCarthy greenlights an impeachment inquiry.

The U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to impeach federal officials including the president for treason, bribery and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” A president can be removed from office if the House approves articles of impeachment by a simple majority and the Senate votes by a two-thirds majority to convict after holding a trial.

Any Biden impeachment effort would be unlikely to succeed. Even if the Republican-controlled House votes to impeach Mr. Biden — an uncertain prospect, given the party’s narrow 222-212 vote margin — it would almost certainly fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Mr. Trump is the only U.S. president to have been impeached twice. He was acquitted both times after trials in the Senate thanks to votes by his fellow Republicans that prevented the chamber from achieving the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.

In his first impeachment, the House in 2019 charged Mr. Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations. In his second impeachment, the House impeached him in 2021 on a charge of inciting an insurrection following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

The first impeachment sought to remove him from office. The second, with a trial held after he left office, sought to disqualify Mr. Trump from ever again holding the presidency.

Mr. Trump, as he has done with many investigations into his actions, called both impeachments politically motivated witch hunts.

Mr. Biden in July mocked Republican lawmakers threatening to impeach him.

“Republicans may have to find something else to criticise me for now that inflation is coming down. Maybe they’ll decide to impeach me because it’s coming down. I don’t know. I’d love that one,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

Washington:

The Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, bowed to pressure from his party’s hard right Tuesday and gave the go-ahead for an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden. 

“I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry,” he said, saying the Democratic president lied to the American people about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings. 

“House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations about President Biden’s conduct,” he said. “Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

The business dealings of Joe Biden’s son Hunter while his father was vice president under Barack Obama have been a constant target of Republicans.

No credible evidence has emerged so far, however, that the elder Biden was involved in anything illegal.

Kevin McCarthy has been under pressure from the right-wing of the party, loyal to Donald Trump, for months to open an impeachment inquiry into 80-year-old Joe Biden.

The White House immediately condemned the move, calling it “extreme politics at its worst.”

“House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing,” Ian Sams, White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Kevin McCarthy, who was forced to compromise with the far-right of the party to win his powerful speaker’s post, said the “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption” against Biden “warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives.”

Democratic lawmakers have denounced the move as a purely partisan exercise intended to exact revenge for the double impeachment by the House of former Republican President Donald Trump.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)