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 voting in favor of the inquiry and 212 Democrats voting against.
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.
Emmer pointed out the surprise appearance was in keeping with the special treatment he believed Hunter Biden has received from his father’s administration.
“Hunter Biden today tried to tell everybody two things are happening,” Emmer said. “One, that what you see is not what really happened with my father. And the second one was, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m doing it again. Because my last name is Biden, I don’t need to honor … valid subpoenas from a House committee that is looking into criminal business dealings and other activities.’”
On Sept. 12, House Republicans initiated their impeachment inquiry without a vote of the full House, pointing to evidence from bank records, transcribed interviews with Hunter’s former business associates as well as documents and testimony from IRS whistleblowers that Joe Biden was aware of his son’s shady business dealings with foreign entities — and that his administration interfered during a five-year probe into them.
The then-vice president met with Hunter’s associates from China, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia — directly contradicting statements Biden made during his 2020 presidential campaign and while in office.
Republicans also are looking into Hunter earning more than $1 million working for a corrupt Romanian businessman as his vice-president dad campaigned against corruption in that country.
Some of those associates have since faced criminal charges, including CEFC China Energy chairman Ye Jianming, who has been detained on bribery allegations in his home country since 2018.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has revealed payments and checks that Biden received from Hunter and first brother James Biden — which the first family’s allies have insisted are mere loan repayments.
House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) has also cited the Justice Department’s alleged interference with IRS investigators who sought to determine the president’s role in overseas dealings after the two whistleblowers sat for transcribed interviews and produced records from their case.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), the author of the resolution formalizing the inquiry, accused Democrats of being willfully ignorant during Wednesday’s floor debate.
“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have an innocent explanation for every single incident,” Armstrong said. “The problem is it’s very difficult to see an innocent explanation for all of the incidents.”
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), endorsing the inquiry, called for GOP restraint, saying, “shrill voices should be kept far from this inquiry lest they undermine its legitimacy and credibility.”
“Democrats would have us simply turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of a family influence-peddling scheme that implicates the President. This we cannot do,” McClintock said, before adding, “Last session, the Democrats made a mockery of impeachment and we cannot allow them to become our teachers.”
But other GOP lawmakers were less cautious in their remarks before the vote.
“I would vote right now to impeach the president,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) told The Post, adding that he believes Hunter should be held in contempt as soon as possible for evading his deposition on Wednesday. “I think that we have a situation where the President is extremely compromised.”
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) led the Democratic counterargument, claiming of Republicans, “The only thing they’ve uncovered is that Joe Biden is a good dad, that he loves his family.”
“We hear the same tired old conspiracy theories being recycled over and over and over again that have all been debunked,”added McGovern, claiming the impeachment inquiry was being launched on behalf of former President Donald Trump.
Manhattan Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, argued that the entire investigation was “pernicious nonsense.”
“The right wing is getting restless. So since they can’t legislate and run it in anything positive, they’ve decided to tear down President Biden,” Nadler said.
Members of the House Rules Committee, which voted Tuesday to advance the impeachment resolution to the floor, told The Post that their inquiry had already assembled enough evidence to prove that Hunter was “selling access” to his father during the vice presidency but more would be needed to file articles of impeachment.
“We need to know the extent to which that was true, the extent to which the vice-president-turned-candidate-turned-president lied about it. And then the extent to which this administration has been obstructing justice in our being able to seek the truth,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
Norman added that Democrats have not yet “debunked” any of the evidence presented over the course of lawmakers’ investigation into the Biden family this year.
“I don’t know what they’ve debunked,” he said, before referring to allegations produced in Hunter Biden’s recent tax fraud indictment in Los Angeles. “Not allowing evidence to come in is not debunking anything. The checks are real. The suspicious activity reports are real. The tax evasion.”
“Just once tell us, Hunter, what were you selling? What was your sale? What were they talking about?” Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) told The Post. “Why did your dad call in on over 20 phone calls with international archcriminals, people that are on the run today?”
“I get a little agitated when 90% of the media tells us we have no evidence whatsoever,” Meuser went on. “I don’t know how circumstantial it can be when payments are made, like day of and then 10% gets to the big guy.”
“I was the former revenue secretary in Pennsylvania,” he added, “and calling a gift or a payment a loan is one of the oldest tricks in the book.”