Republicans are justified in mulling impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden

Hunter and Joe Biden in Washington in 2016. Picture: Getty Images

The walls are closing in on President Joe Biden, as evidence that he’s been lying for years about his involvement in and knowledge of his son Hunter’s shady dealings with businesses in Ukraine and China becomes harder to ignore.

It’s no surprise that over the past three months his chances of being the 2024 Democratic Party nominee for president have steadily fallen, from 78 per cent to 66 per cent, according to political betting market PredictIt.

For all Democrat protestations that the evidence against Joe Biden is shonky or politically motivated, it’s notable the White House has changed this week the form of words it uses to brush off any questions.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has flipped from claiming the President “never spoke” to his family about their business dealings to a quite different “was not in business with Hunter Biden” line.

Richard Nixon, recall, wasn’t impeached so much for the Watergate break-in as he was for lying about it.

Donald Trump was impeached over a single phone call with the Ukrainian President in 2019.

Consider the state of the evidence. First, Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, which first emerged publicly in October 2020, has been a trove of incriminating embarrassments for the Biden family, which sadly for it was very much not Russian disinformation.

Then Republicans took control of congress, establishing committees that have since unearthed evidence that millions of dollars were paid from businesses in China, Ukraine and Romania to the Biden family for reasons that remain unknown.

Last month IRS whistleblowers came forward to claim Hunter Biden was treated with kid gloves by the Justice Department during a painfully slow investigation, which ultimately produced tax and gun charges.

Last week an FBI whistleblower finally gave Republican senator Chuck Grassley a document that alleged the Biden family was involved in a bribery scheme, whereby the family pocketed $US10m on the condition the then vice-president put pressure on the Ukrainian government.

And things could get even worse next week when Hunter’s ex-friend Devon Archer testifies before a congressional committee that the younger Biden put his father on speaker phone at least a dozen times to impress foreign clients.

In isolation, none of this evidence is proof of corruption or illegality. But there’s so much smoke, there must be at least a little fire. An impeachment inquiry, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has proposed, would provide the legislative machinery to evaluate the evidence.

However justified in this case, impeachment has lost its cache, after Democrats twice tried to impeach Trump. It’s increasingly more of a political statement than anything particularly horrifying to voters.

Given the explosion of leaks against the President by White House and Democrat staff in recent weeks, it’s not clear Democrat strategists would be all that upset about the prospect of an impeachment, which could make shuffling off the 80-year old President a little easier.