Washington:
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives will vote Wednesday on whether to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden based on his son’s controversial international dealings — a move Democrats slammed as purely political.
Republicans have yet to provide evidence of corruption by the president and the Democratic-led Senate would be unlikely to convict the US leader even if the inquiry did lead to an actual impeachment trial.
Regardless, the procedure will guarantee Republicans a new, high-profile platform to attack Biden as he campaigns for reelection in 2024 — and to distract from the federal criminal trials facing his almost certain challenger Donald Trump.
Conservatives accuse Biden’s troubled son Hunter of influence-peddling — effectively trading on the family name in pay-to-play schemes during his business dealings in Ukraine and China.
The alleged corruption all occurred well before Joe Biden was president, serving as vice president to Barack Obama.
Hunter Biden, whose chaotic personal life and business dealings have become a magnet for right-wing conspiracy theories and media investigations, issued an angry statement in Washington.
“My father was not financially involved in my business,” Hunter Biden said.
Hunter Biden, a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist-turned-artist whose life has been marred by personal tragedy, alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction, was speaking to reporters from Capitol Hill, after refusing to attend a closed-door hearing led by Republicans just inside.
Admitting to having “made mistakes in my life,” the 53-year-old accused the Republican Party’s far-right, led by Trump, of a smear campaign meant to “dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father.”
Biden, 81, who has always steadfastly defended his son and denied being in business with him, did not immediately comment.
– ‘Zero evidence’ –
Egged on by Trump — who was impeached twice, including for his attempts to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss to Biden — the Republican Party first began probing a possible Biden impeachment earlier this year. Hearings began late September, leading to the decision to hold Wednesday’s vote.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer charged Wednesday that the investigations so far have “revealed how Joe Biden knew of, participated in, and benefited from his family cashing in on the Biden name around the world.”
Experts interviewed during the proceedings, however, said there was no evidence to justify a Biden impeachment.
And Democrats say the Republicans are playing pure politics.
“There is zero evidence that President Biden has engaged in any wrongdoing,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday.
The Republicans, however, say that by triggering the full inquiry they will gain new legal powers allowing them to find the evidence they need.
The floor vote was scheduled to take place after 5:00 pm (2200 GMT).
“It’s time to get the American people answers,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on X, formerly Twitter.
The US Constitution provides that Congress may remove a president for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Impeachment by the House, which is the political equivalent of a criminal indictment, would spark a trial by the Senate, with the president losing his job if convicted — an unlikely scenario for Biden given the chamber’s Democratic control.
Although three US presidents have been impeached — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Trump in 2019 and 2021 — none has ever been removed from office by the Senate.
Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the face of an almost certain impeachment in the fallout of the Watergate scandal.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)