On September 27, the President of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, ordered the opening of a formal investigation into Joe Biden, aimed at impeaching the President of the United States. The House of Representatives has brought charges (so-called articles of impeachment) against only three US presidents in history. All three were acquitted by the Senate. Republicans, at least those on the radical wing, want Biden to come fourth. That remains to be seen. Other investigations, like the one underway now, have ended without charges being filed.
Republicans want to impeach Biden from day one of his term in office. The day after she took office, January 21, 2021, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a proposal to do so that failed in a Democratic-majority House of Representatives. After the renewal of Congress last January and the difficult election of McCarthy as speaker of the House, Republicans returned to the fray. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert introduced an initiative to politically challenge him over his immigration policies, but this sparked an internal dispute and Republicans themselves abandoned the idea. Now the investigation ordered by McCarthy is related to his son Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, which he said reflected an alleged “culture of corruption” and “abuse of power.” Hunter Biden was an adviser to Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company whose owner was implicated in corruption cases.
What is Biden accused of?
McCarthy announced the opening of the investigation on September 27 and mentioned a number of facts that were far from proven or which he only partially stated. He argued that “Biden has lied to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings abroad.” During the 2020 campaign, he claimed his son had not done business in China, which turned out to be false, but Republicans couldn’t prove that Biden knew about Hunter’s business dealings or that he lied about them as president. McCarthy also said that Biden’s interactions with his son’s staff and customers “resulted in cars and millions of dollars,” but there was no evidence that they went beyond greetings and a dinner, nor that the then-vice president was involved in any business .
The speaker talked about how members of the Biden family (his son Hunter and the president’s brother Jimmy Biden) and their associates received $20 million through “shell companies” and that 150 banking transactions were identified as suspicious. In reality, they were ordinary limited liability companies, the money did not belong only to the Bidens and there is no evidence that they were illegal companies, even if they were a bit shady. The banks initially describe cash transactions with large amounts and transfers from abroad whose legitimacy is unclear as suspicious. So far, however, none have led to a criminal investigation.
McCarthy also spoke of suspected bribery of the Bidens that was reported to the FBI, but it was an unconfirmed claim that was denied by other testimony. And there is no evidence that the Biden administration, as the Republican claims, gave his family preferential treatment. The prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden was appointed by Trump at the time, and the Justice Department elevated him to the rank of special prosecutor, strengthening his independence. In fact, he plans to ask a grand jury to indict the president’s son on illegal gun purchases.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
What is impeachment?
Articles 1 and 2 of the United States Constitution regulate the possibility of subjecting public officials to a political process for dismissal or removal from office. In federal cases, the impeachment lies in the House of Representatives and the trial takes place in the Senate. Article 2 states in the fourth section that “the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office if charged and convicted of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and petty errors.” In addition to the federal trials, there are federal political trials, such as the one in Texas against Attorney General Ken Paxton.
What is an impeachment inquiry?
The President of the House of Representatives has ordered impeachment proceedings against Biden, claiming that there is a “culture of corruption” in his family, largely due to his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings abroad. He has ordered the presidents of three commissions to initiate this formal investigation, which will involve conditions and subpoenas. It is a pre-impeachment investigation to determine whether there is material to advance the process. A formal investigation of this type is not strictly necessary for the formulation of the allegation, but is common practice.
Can the investigation be opened without a vote?
Kevin McCarthy has that power as Speaker of the House, but until recently he asserted that he would not do so without the approval of the entire House. When her predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, ordered the opening of the investigation into Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial in September 2019, McCarthy wrote a letter to the then-Speaker stating that a full House vote should be held to authorize an impeachment inquiry without any merit or legitimacy established He claimed the same thing a few weeks ago: “If we initiate impeachment proceedings, it will be done through a vote in the plenary session of the People’s Chamber and not through a statement from one person.”
What are the next steps?
The president of the Oversight Commission, in coordination with the presidents of the Judicial Commission and the Ways and Means Commission, the three Republicans, is responsible for initiating the formal investigation. They may issue subpoenas, demands, and other types of actions. Some members of Congress have indicated they will conduct an in-depth investigation since they have “until the 2024 elections.” The Republicans want to torment Biden politically and believe that an investigation of this kind can somewhat compensate for the accusations and trials that Donald Trump faces before the presidential election on November 5 next year, in which the entire House of Representatives also takes part. and a third of the Senate. After the investigation, it is customary for a commission to finalize the charges, the criminal equivalent of charges or allegations, and submit them to the plenary session of the House of Commons. If drafted and approved by the full House, the Senate would be the one to conduct the impeachment trial.
Is impeachment assured?
No. There are precedents for launching formal investigations where no charges have been brought. In 1860, President James Buchanan was under investigation for alleged bribery and other allegations, but after a year of work, the special commission in charge of the case concluded that there was no incriminating material. In 1867, the Judiciary Commission finally recommended the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, but the full House voted against it (even though the same president would be impeached in a different case the following year). There is a third example from 1974 in which impeachment did not occur because then-President Richard Nixon resigned. The Judiciary Committee had approved three articles of impeachment on charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress over his role in the Watergate scandal, but the full House did not vote on them.
What role do the House of Representatives and Senate play?
According to Article 1 of the Constitution, only the House of Representatives “has power to institute impeachment proceedings.” When the Commission presents the articles of impeachment to the plenary session, a simple majority is enough to approve them. In that case, Biden would join the list that includes Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. The impeachment trial would then begin in the Senate. Chief Justice John Roberts would preside. House-appointed congressmen would serve as prosecutors, while senators would serve as jurors. According to the Constitution, “no person shall be convicted without the consent of two-thirds of the Senators present.” That means 67 votes would be needed if all 100 senators were present. The Democrats have a 51-49 majority in the upper house.
What punishment can be imposed?
The Constitution states in the third section of Article 1 that “the penalty for impeachment shall not exceed removal from office and forfeiture from obtaining or holding any position of honor, trust, or reward in the Government of the United States; However, the convicted official must still be charged, tried, convicted and punished in accordance with the law.” Political conviction does not exempt from prosecution. In the hypothetical case that a president is removed, he will be replaced by the vice president.
Who will testify as a witness?
The three Republican witnesses are Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic accountant; Eileen O’Connor, former assistant attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tax Division; and Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and Fox News contributor.
The Democrats called Michael Gerhardt, a professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina, as a witness. Gerhardt served as special counsel to the president in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.
Which presidents have been impeached?
Political prosecution is an exceptional procedure. Only three presidents throughout history (Andrew Johnson in 1868; Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump twice in 2019 and 2021) have been impeached by the Senate at the request of the House of Representatives. Representatives and all were acquitted.
Johnson’s case
The trial of Andrew Johnson arose in a battle between Democrats and Republicans at a time of rising tensions following the end of the American Civil War. Congress, controlled by a radical wing of the Republican Party, passed a law that prevented the Democratic president from firing upper house appointees without Senate support. Johnson ignored this law and fired his secretary of war, a Republican ally, leading to impeachment. In two votes in May 1868, the Senate fell just one vote short of the vote needed to remove the president.
The Clinton case
The impeachment trial accused Bill Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice for concealing his 1997 sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The key was to determine whether Clinton lied under oath when he denied having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky (with whom he had oral sex) and whether he obstructed investigations by encouraging her to deny the relationship . On the perjury charge, 45 senators found him guilty and 55 found him not guilty. Due to obstruction it was a 50-50 draw. He was acquitted.
The Trump cases
Trump’s first impeachment trial is related to the current one. It arose from Donald Trump’s attempts to seek help from Ukraine to denigrate Joe Biden, then the favorite for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, over his son’s business dealings in the country. The House charged him in December 2019 with abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival and obstruction of Congress for ordering officials not to testify. He was acquitted of both charges by a vote of 48 to 52 and 47 to 53, respectively, with a majority of those who found him not guilty voting.
Trump’s second impeachment had the peculiarity that a president was tried after he had left office. He was charged with incitement of insurrection for his role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Fifty-seven of the 100 senators (including seven from his own party, an unprecedented rate) considered him guilty, but they fell far short of the enhanced two-thirds majority that would have meant his political disqualification.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits