The House voted Wednesday to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, allowing committee chairmen to compel interviews, obtain documents and further their case that he improperly benefitted from his son’s foreign business dealings.
The vote broke down along party lines, with 221 Republicans in favor of the inquiry and 212 Democrats against.
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) was the only member absent.
President Biden denounced House Republicans following the vote, saying they were “choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt.”
“Instead of doing anything to make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden, 81, said. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) disagreed and said his conference did “not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome.”
“As President Biden continues to stonewall lawful Congressional subpoenas, today’s vote of the full House of Representatives authorizing the inquiry puts us in the strongest position to enforce these subpoenas in court,” Johnson said in a statement.
The House voted Wednesday to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Pictured here speaking at a meeting of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 13, 2023.AFP via Getty Images
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told The Post that the White House had forced Republicans to put the resolution up for a vote after “blocking witnesses from testifying” and “withholding thousands of documents,” including emails Biden traded with his son and his son’s business partners while he was vice president, which are held at the National Archives.
The White House told Republicans that it was “not going to acknowledge or … recognize these subpoenas as valid without a full vote of the House,” Emmer said. “[Speaker] Mike Johnson, when faced with that said, ‘All right, well, we’re gonna have to go to court to get these enforced anyway, might as well eliminate any objection that they have before we get there.”
“For the president who says he’s the most transparent president in the history of this country, he’s set a poor example — and he sure is stonewalling,” added Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).
The first son popped up outside the Capitol Wednesday morning to filibuster to the press after skipping his closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee — potentially putting him in contempt of Congress.
“For six years, I’ve been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine shouting, ‘Where’s Hunter?’ Well, here’s my answer, ‘I am here,’” Hunter, 53, told a crowd of reporters.
“Let me state as clearly as I can: my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist,” he said before exiting without taking questions.
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BREAKING: All 221 House Republicans Vote to Open Impeachment Inquiry Into Joe Biden
BREAKING UPDATE: All 221 House Republicans voted to open a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
The vote was along party lines: 221-212.
The full House floor vote is expected to take place at 5 pm ET.
House Republicans have a very slim 3-vote majority after a few GOP lawmakers retired this year.
Joe Biden ignored reporters shouting questions about his son Hunter’s decision to defy a subpoena. Biden also refused to answer questions on the impending impeachment vote.
NBC News reported:
House Republicans are expected to vote Wednesday to authorize their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden — a formal step they believe will grant them the ability to better enforce their subpoenas in the courts.
“We think a formal vote of the majority of the House, on record, for a power that solely resides with the House — that helps us if, in fact, we’ve got to go to court,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the GOP leaders in the impeachment push, told reporters Tuesday. “Hopefully, just passing it in and of itself is enough to say, ‘OK, guys, come in and talk to us.’”
The vote is expected in the evening, after 5 p.m. ET. And Republican leaders have expressed confidence they will have the support to officially launch the inquiry.
Earlier this month House Speaker Johnson said a vote on a formal Biden impeachment inquiry is a “necessary step” after the Biden White House stonewalled congressional investigators.
Johnson recently said the decision on whether to hold a full floor vote to impeach Joe Biden is coming “very soon.”
“It’s become a necessary step,” Johnson said on Fox News. “Elise and I both served on the impeachment defense team of Donald Trump twice when the Democrats used it for brazen, partisan political purposes. We decried that use of it. This is very different. Remember, we are the rule of law team. We have to do it very methodically.”
“Our three committees of jurisdiction, judiciary, oversight, ways and means have been doing an extraordinary job following the evidence where it leads,” Johnson said. “But now we’re being stonewalled by the White House, because they’re preventing at least two to three DOJ witnesses from coming forward, a former White House counsel, the national archives . . . the White House has withheld thousands of pages of evidence.”
Joe Biden believes he is above the law.
The National Archives is withholding 99.98% of Joe Biden’s alias emails, according to House Oversight Chairman James Comer.
The National Archives previously confirmed through a FOIA response that they found 5,138 email messages and 25 electronic files pertaining to the known Joe Biden pseudonym accounts [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].
After missing the deadline to turn over the requested documents, the National Archives said it located 82,000 pages of emails then-Vice President Joe Biden sent or received on three separate private pseudonym accounts to conduct illicit business deals with foreign officials.
NARA was forced to search for Biden’s pseudonym emails in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the Southern Legal Foundation, a conservative nonprofit law firm.
The National Archives has only turned over 14 pages of the 82,000 pages.
Joe Biden has also made it very clear that he will not cooperate with congressional Republicans investigating his stolen classified documents.
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