The president of the United States House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, announced the opening of an investigation before an impeachment trial against Joe Biden due to alleged corruption. He believes the Democratic leader is “lying” to the American people.
For the White House, this process is “extreme politics at its worst.” The US Constitution says that Congress can remove the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
House Republicans, who have held the majority since January, are conducting a series of parliamentary investigations into the activities of Hunter Biden, the president’s youngest son. Republican lawmakers said they “recognize the serious and credible allegations about President Biden’s conduct,” McCarthy said, accusing the Democrat of fostering a “culture of corruption.”
However, at the moment this investigation has almost no chance of leading to the impeachment of Biden, because the Democrats have the majority of seats in the Senate, the chamber that oversees the trial of presidents.
Hunter, a 53-year-old former businessman, has become a favorite target of the American right. Republican representatives accused him of doing business with Ukraine and China with the help of contacts and names of his father, former vice president of Barack Obama (2009-2017).
Biden has always supported his son, who has a history of drug addiction and problems with the law.
The opening of an impeachment procedure has been demanded for months by the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, where McCarthy had to make several compromises to access power in January.
However, many moderate Republican lawmakers oppose this investigation for fear of turning the procedure into a partisan exercise.
The investigation will be led by James Comer, head of the House investigation committee, and Jim Jordan, head of the judiciary committee. Both men were political allies of McCarthy.
Johnson, Clinton and Trump
Democrats counter that these rights efforts are nothing more than smoke screens used to hide the legal problems that have accumulated for Trump, who has been criminally indicted four times in less than six months. .
The White House responded to McCarthy’s remarks. “The House of Representatives has been investigating the president for nine months and they have found no evidence of wrongdoing,” Ian Sams, government spokesman for oversight and investigations, told X.
Opening this investigation is “extreme politics at its worst,” he added.
To date, a president has never been removed from office in an impeachment trial in the history of the United States.
Three were indicted: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Trump in 2019 and 2021. But all were ultimately acquitted.
Richard Nixon chose to resign in 1974 to avoid impeachment by Congress due to the Watergate scandal.
