WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans launched a formal impeachment hearing Thursday against President Joe Biden, saying they intend to “provide accountability” as they make their case to the public, their colleagues and skeptics in the Senate.
The chairmen of the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees used the opening hearing of their impeachment inquiry to review the constitutional and legal questions involved. They are trying to show what they say are links to Biden’s son Hunter’s overseas businesses, though key witnesses said they do not yet see hard evidence of impeachable offenses.
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky, the Oversight chairman, said the lawmakers have “a mountain of evidence” that will show that the elder Biden “abused his public office for his family’s financial gain.”
Comer said the panel will continue to “follow the money and the evidence to provide accountability” to the American people.
It’s a high-stakes opening act for Republicans, coming in the midst of a potential federal government shutdown, as they begin a process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president, punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The hearing comes as House Republicans face scattered reluctance from their own ranks to an impeachment inquiry and deep resistance in the Senate from Republicans who worry about political ramifications and say Biden’s conviction and removal from office is a near impossibility.
As the hearing began, Democrats displayed a screen showing the days, hours and minutes left until the government shuts down as Congress struggles to fund the government before Saturday’s deadline.
“We’re 62 hours away from shutting down the government of the United States of America and Republicans are launching an impeachment drive, based on a long debunked and discredited lie,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel.
Raskin questioned the legitimacy of the hearing since the House has not voted to formally launch the impeachment inquiry. He said Republicans are rehashing five-year-old allegations raised by Donald Trump, who is Biden’s chief rival in 2024, during the former president’s 2019 impeachment over Ukraine.
“They don’t have a shred of evidence against President Biden for an impeachable offense,” he said.
The hearing Thursday is not featuring witnesses with information about the Bidens or Hunter Biden’s business work. Instead, the panel heard from outside experts in tax law, criminal investigations and constitutional legal theory.
A top Republican-called witness, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who is an expert in impeachment issues, said he believed the House had passed the threshold for an inquiry but that the current evidence was not enough for charges.
“I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment,” Turley said.
Democrats, who decry the investigation as a political ploy aimed at hurting Biden and helping Trump as he runs again for president, brought in Michael Gerhardt, a law professor who has also appeared as an expert in previous impeachment proceedings.
In detailing the reasons Republicans say they have to impeach Biden, Gerhardt concluded: “If that’s what exists, as a basis for this inquiry, it is not sufficient. I say that with all respect.”
