What we know about impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden
As news broke about Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry, an email sent from the White House painted a dire picture.
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Almost as soon as an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden was announced, an email from the White House landed in the inboxes of major media organisations across the United States.
On its surface, the missive from Ian Sams, a special assistant to the president, was to pressure journalists – from Fox News to CNN, and all between – to “ramp up scrutiny” of the inquiry and “debunk” its claims.
More than anything, the two-page memo with its 14-page appendix showed how seriously the Biden administration has been preparing for impeachment since the Democratic political party lost control of the House of Representatives in last year’s midterm elections.
“I get up every day, not a joke, not focused on impeachment,” Biden said in his first comment on the inquiry. “I’ve got a job to do.”
The memo, sent from the White House counsel’s office and titled “It’s Time For The Media To Do More To Scrutinize House Republicans’ Demonstrably False Claims That They’re Basing Impeachment Stunt On”, suggested otherwise.
Biden “not focused” on impeachment is like Biden saying this week he was at Ground Zero the day after 9/11. He wasn’t. Or that he got arrested protesting civil rights in the 1960s. He didn’t. Or that he graduated top of his class. He was 76th … out of 85.
Mr Sams’ rapid fire response was the first salvo in a Biden administration “impeachment playbook” that has been more than a year in the making, according to the perennial “people familiar with the matter”.
The reason: Most Americans, 61 per cent, believe Biden was involved in Ukraine and China business dealings of his son Hunter Biden, who was indicted on Friday on firearm offences in an ongoing special counsel investigation that is also delving into corruption allegations.
More than half of Americans, 55 per cent, say the president acted inappropriately regarding the investigation into his son’s potential crimes, which also include allegations of tax violations, acting as an unregistered foreign lobbyist, and peddling influence while Biden was Vice President.
And almost half, 42 per cent, think the president acted illegally in those business dealings, according to the bombshell poll by CNN, which reported that Biden insiders spent the entirety of August war gaming their response in consultation with veterans of past impeachments.
That negative sentiment, captured by sympathetic pollsters just a week before the impeachment inquiry was launched, shows most of the US, regardless of political leaning, is predisposed to considering the Republican Party’s claims the allegations “paint a picture of a culture of corruption”.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the inquiry would look into whether Biden played a role in, or benefited from, his son’s businesses, with the formal step giving investigators powers to subpoena the Biden family’s financial records.
Whether any proof is found is beside the point. In the current cold civil war of the US’s partisan politics, there is almost certainly a zero per cent chance Biden won’t be impeached in the Republican-controlled House, just as there is almost certainly a zero per cent chance he will be found guilty in a Democrat-controlled Senate.
To wit: Donald Trump’s impeachment in the Democrat-controlled House, and acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate, in 2019, and again in 2021.
At a New Jersey golf course this week, ex-president Trump had dinner and Diet Cokes with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, with Congressman Matt Gaetz, has been leading the push for their party’s leadership to impeach Biden.
She briefed Trump on the impeachment strategy and the “long list of names” she claims are co-conspirators, adding in a Times interview she wants the inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden”.
The thrust of the Biden admin playbook in defence, as outlined in the White House memo, is that there is “no evidence on which to support” an impeachment; a talking point that has been parroted verbatim in the days since.
According to Republicans, however, the evidence is manifest. Two business partners of Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and Tony Tony Bobulinski, have testified that the president was involved in their business dealings.
There’s Hunter’s own text messages to his daughter suggesting he paid his dad’s bills, and WhatsApp threads to foreign nationals that his dad was sitting next to him as he demanded their business commitments be “fulfilled”.
Biden himself bragged during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that he threatened to withhold US $1 billion in aid from Ukraine unless they fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was leading a corruption investigation into Burisma, the oil company on which Hunter Biden was a board member. It can be watched on YouTube.
“Well, son of a bitch,” Biden said to rapturous laughter. “He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid”. It can still be watched on YouTube.
While there’s no smoking gun, like a wire transfer from Hunter Biden into a bank account of Joe Biden, they’re all forms of evidence, whether compelling or not, and all now in the public record after a year of Republican House committee investigations.
But evidence is not proof. Every criminal trial has evidence, direct or circumstantial, presented by both prosecution and the defence. Whether that evidence constitutes proof is up to a jury of the accused’s 12 peers.
In the arena of impeachment, however, no amount of evidence, smoking gun or otherwise, will constitute proof before a jury of 100 political antagonists. That’s not the point. It’s whether it will constitute proof in the minds of American voters in the 2024 presidential election.
Democrats know this. They did it in 2019. They lost the impeachment but won the election. And Republicans know it in 2023. They brag about it. Mr Gaetz, who with Ms Taylor Greene claims credit for pressuring Mr McCarthy into launching the inquiry under threat of a vote to remove him as House speaker, said the quiet part out loud.
“The purpose of that impeachment, from my standpoint, is not to force a vote that loses,” he said during a Twitter Space. “It’s to put on a trial in the Senate, and by the way, not for the sake of conviction.”
“There’s no conviction and removal of Joe Biden coming on impeachment. I know that. You know that,” Gaetz added. “The jury is the American people”.
This week’s inquiry, and the White House’s immediate rebuttal, marked the real start to the Trump-Biden rematch to be litigated before a jury of 331 million peers.
Like Trump four years ago, the made-for-TV showdown is expressly designed to have the president get up every day, “not a joke”, singularly focused on the theatre of impeachment.
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Originally published as What we know about impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden
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