Top GOP House members said President Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry might conclude by the end of the year with Hunter Biden’s deposition. Then, a decision might be made on bringing formal articles to the floor.
“We get those depositions done this year and…then we can decide on whether or not there’s articles,” said Republican Jim Jordan, House Judiciary Committee Chair from Ohio, on Tuesday.
According to the report, the president’s son, Hunter Biden, is under subpoena from the committee and is expected to be deposed in the next few weeks.
“We understand that the further you go toward an election, the more politicized these conversations become,” said GOP Representative Ben Cline, a committee member from Virginia. “That’s why it’s all the more important for us to begin to take action sooner rather than later.”
While the inquiry continues to wind down with around 15 more interviews to finish by the end of the year, the political battle among Republicans on whether to issue formal impeachment articles is heating up with more centrist House GOP members concerned about how impeaching the public will perceive Biden with the looming 2024 election.
“Any kind of an impeachment puts our Biden people in a really tough spot,” said a GOP lawmaker involved in the investigation, who was given anonymity. “Impeachment hurts us politically — it makes our base feel better.”
GOP members want to see a “smoking gun” before impeachment moves ahead
Those Republican members want to see more of a “smoking gun” before impeachment moves ahead.
The report said the White House and Democrats are preparing to rebut GOP claims of Biden and his son peddling influence and taking bribes for favorable policy decisions, along with potential obstruction accusations.
“House Republicans have already spent a year on their expensive and time-consuming so-called ‘investigation,’ and they’ve turned up zero evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden,” said White House spokesperson Ian Sams in a statement. “In fact, their own witnesses and the thousands of pages of documents they’ve obtained have repeatedly debunked their false allegations.”
The newly elected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, Republican from Louisiana, said the GOP investigations “have my full and unwavering support” and should continue to follow the evidence.
“Now, the appropriate step is to place key witnesses under oath and question them under the penalty of perjury, to fill gaps in the record,” Johnson said, adding that the GOP are moving “toward an infection point in this critical investigation.”
