Impeachment Inquiry on the Ropes as Moderates Go Silent and Hunter Biden Gets Defiant

The effort by House Republicans to impeach President Biden hangs by a thread after GOP members have not publicly committed to backing the effort and Hunter Biden deploys his aggressive public relations battle. The House is expected to take up an official impeachment inquiry authorization bill in the coming days. One retiring member of the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Ken Buck, said Monday that he will not vote to authorize the impeachment inquiry. If he holds firm, that means Speaker Johnson can only afford to lose two other GOP members if he wants the resolution to pass. Most of the 17 Republican lawmakers who represent districts won by Mr. Biden in 2020 have not yet commented on moving the impeachment process forward. New data from Public Policy Polling may help explain the Biden-district members’ hesitancy. According to the new polling, voters in those 17 Biden-won districts that are now represented by the GOP say they are more likely to vote against someone who votes in favor of impeachment authorization. In total, 44 percent say they would be less likely to back the incumbent, compared to 24 percent who said it would make them more likely to support the member. In a sign of how unsure they are about the prospect of passing the resolution, Republican leadership will introduce a separate resolution that does not authorize an impeachment inquiry but does grant additional legal authority to committees issuing subpoenas. That resolution was first reported by Punchbowl News.Some Senate Republicans and all Democrats are still pushing back against the impeachment effort. On Sunday, Senator Romney said on “Meet The Press” that he would not back an impeachment inquiry authorization. The GOP majority whip, Senator Thune, previously said that impeachment “would not be advantageous” for his party. The chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, told MSNBC Monday that the impeachment effort is a waste of the House’s time. “It’s terrible because it’s distracting us from doing actual work that needs to be done,” she said. The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, which is leading the impeachment investigation, Congressman Jamie Raskin, is reportedly speaking to his Republican colleagues about why they should vote against the inquiry authorization, according to Fox News. Hunter Biden, meanwhile, has not shied away from publicly tangling with the impeachment diehards, going so far as to write an opinion piece in USA Today blaming his addiction — not corruption — for financial mistakes and sitting for a podcast interview with his friend and fellow recovering addict, the famous musician Moby. Mr. Biden said in the interview with Moby that congressional Republicans are focusing on his past as a way to damage his father emotionally, hoping he will withdraw from the 2024 race. “They decided that the one way in which they would be able to certainly just undermine my dad’s confidence and ability to continue to campaign and move forward — particularly after the death of my brother — to think that he could lose his son that he just had regained from an almost-death, through addiction,” he said.“They’re trying to kill me, knowing it would be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle, and so therefore destroying a presidency in that way,” he told Moby. “And so they just began to attack, and attack, and attack. And you know, addiction provides for a lot of openings for people.”In the interview, Mr. Biden likened himself to the wife of a former presidential candidate, Edmund Muskie, who was labeled a “drunkard” by conservatives in the lead-up to the 1972 presidential election in order to discredit the senator’s challenge to President Nixon. “They labeled her a drunkard,” Mr. Biden said of the GOP operatives who attacked Jane Muskie. “The times have changed, but the players have not.”Mr. Biden’s refusal to comply with the subpoena that orders him to sit for a closed-door deposition could land him in serious legal trouble. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, says that appearing publicly is more than sufficient, but the lawmakers who issued the order — Congressman James Comer and Congressman Jim Jordan — say that if he does not sit for the deposition, he will be held in contempt of Congress. Their push to potentially hold the first son in contempt could be bolstered if the House adopts a resolution this week that officially authorizes the committees to conduct an impeachment inquiry. The White House has said that the lack of a full House vote makes the impeachment process illegitimate. The Rules Committee announced Thursday that it will consider the impeachment inquiry authorization bill on Tuesday morning, with full House passage expected to take place either on Tuesday afternoon or on Wednesday. “On Tuesday, December 12th, [the Rules committee] will markup H. Res. 918, a resolution directing a framework for continued impeachment inquiry investigations and upholding the House’s constitutional authorities,” the panel said in a statement Thursday. The text of the resolution directs the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees — which have been conducting the nearly year-long investigation into the Biden family — “to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Joseph Biden, President of the United States of America.”

Impeachment Inquiry on the Ropes as Moderates Go Silent and Hunter Biden Gets Defiant

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