The US House of Representatives agreed on Wednesday to formally open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, motivated by the president's son's controversial affairs abroad but viewed by Democrats as completely baseless.
This approach has almost no chance of success, but could become a headache for the White House ahead of the November 2024 presidential election in which Joe Biden is running.
Conservatives, who have held the majority in the House of Representatives since January, accuse the Democratic leader of using his influence during his time as Barack Obama's vice president (2009-2017) to facilitate his son's questionable deals in China and Ukraine.
“Joe Biden has repeatedly lied to the American people,” accused the chairman of the House Investigation Committee, James Comer, from the chamber.
The president, Democrats and his son strongly deny these allegations.
“My father was never financially involved in my affairs,” Hunter Biden, who has become the right’s main target, refuted during a rare news conference on Wednesday.
Present before the US Congress, the 50-year-old, whose past was marked by addiction and was indicted in two cases, admitted that he had made “mistakes” in his life.
But he accused “the Trumpists” of wanting to “dehumanize” him and “harm” his father. For this reason, he refused to take part in a closed hearing organized by the Republicans, who had invited him to the Capitol on Wednesday.
The 81-year-old president has always publicly supported Hunter Biden, often repeating that he is “proud” of him.
Impeachment proceedings had already been initiated against Joe Biden in the summer, which had long been called for by elected officials close to Donald Trump.
At the end of September, a first parliamentary hearing on this issue was even organized, at which the experts interviewed agreed that there was currently nothing that would justify impeachment against President Biden.
“There is no evidence that President Biden committed any wrongdoing,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries added on Wednesday.
But Republicans believe that formally launching the investigation, decided by their votes alone, will give them additional powers and therefore new opportunities to implicate the Democratic leader.
“The time has come to give the American people answers,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said Wednesday.
The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress may impeach the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The procedure takes place in two steps.
After completing its investigation, the House of Representatives votes by a simple majority on articles of impeachment detailing the facts alleged against the president: this is known in English as “impeachment.”
If there is a vote on impeachment, the Senate, the upper house of Congress, would then put the president on trial. However, he would most likely be acquitted since Joe Biden's party has the majority in that chamber.
No president has ever been impeached in American history. Three were indicted: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. But all were ultimately acquitted.
Richard Nixon chose to resign in 1974 to avoid certain impeachment by Congress due to the Watergate scandal.