House Republicans have called Joe Biden’s bluff by voting to authorize an impeachment inquiry into the scope of his knowledge of, and involvement in, his son’s overseas business activities. The Biden White House has until now claimed that subpoenas for documents and witnesses relevant to Republicans’ investigations lack legitimacy because the full House had not voted to approve impeachment proceedings. That all changed on Dec. 13 when the House voted along party lines to move forward with impeachment. The vote tally was a somewhat predictable 221-212.
As Liberty Nation had previously noted, there is no constitutional requirement for the House to authorize an impeachment process. However, it gives the inquiry more legitimacy. When Democrats impeached former President Donald Trump for the first time in 2019, they too began their investigations without a vote on the house floor – though an impeachment resolution was subsequently approved. Trump’s second impeachment came just seven days after the events on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021. That “snap impeachment” forever tarnished what was always intended to be a grave course of action, to be taken with the utmost deliberation.
Impeachment – a Tarnished Procedure
The second impeachment of the 45th president – only a week before his term in office expired – demonstrated a cavalier attitude to the process on the part of Democrats. The Senate trial did not even begin until six days after Trump left the White House. Senate Republicans introduced a motion to dismiss the trial for that very reason, but the motion was tabled because five GOP Senators voted to move forward.
Democrat cries that the impeachment investigation into Joe Biden is a politically motivated sham ring somewhat hollow. Similarly, claims that the GOP has no evidence of wrongdoing on Biden’s part are not only a denial of reality but comical, considering that Democrats began preparing their first impeachment of Trump before they even had an offense to name. Republicans have yet to prove that Joe Biden willingly participated in a scheme to enrich himself through his son’s influence-peddling, but they certainly have a great deal of evidence that requires examination.
Before the House voted, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said, "We are now at a pivotal moment in our investigation. We will soon depose and interview several members of the Biden family and their associates about these influence-peddling schemes. But we are facing obstruction from the White House."
Certainly, nobody could accuse Republicans of rushing into impeachment. They have repeatedly made the point that formalizing the inquiry was necessary in the face of non-cooperation from the Biden White House. It’s almost as if Mr. Biden was daring Republican lawmakers to bring the vote. He may have believed they would lose, given the GOP’s slim majority and the apparent reluctance of some Republicans to move ahead with an impeachment which, justified or not, was always going to be portrayed by politicians and pundits on the left as entirely partisan. As Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) told Fox News Digital ahead of the vote:
"The White House sent a letter… saying that the subpoenas [Republicans] had served will not be honored and won't even be recognized without a full vote of the House. So, our speaker has done exactly what I would expect he would do as a lawyer. We're going to honor that. We're going to go ahead and do a full floor vote. He knows we're probably going to have to go to court to enforce these anyway, so might as well eliminate any of the objections that they have."
It is likely that articles of impeachment, should it come to that, are still many weeks or even months away. That could put an eventual House vote to impeach in the middle of the 2024 primaries or perhaps even after they are over, as the respective candidates go head-to-head. Though Joe Biden is all but certain to avoid conviction by the Senate should he be impeached, his reelection campaign will need to factor in how to address impeachment without bringing the whole saga of Hunter Biden’s questionable financial transactions back into the spotlight.
