WASHINGTON — House Republicans are considering holding a vote to formalize the two-month-old impeachment inquiry of President Biden — changing tack ahead of high-stakes depositions with Biden’s son and brother.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told fellow Republicans privately that a vote to formally authorize the inquiry could come soon, though he did not specify a date, a source familiar with the conversation told The Post.
On Sept. 12, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opened the inquiry without a floor vote, as a handful of Republicans said they weren’t yet sold.
A successful vote could help unify the razor-thin GOP majority behind the corruption inquiry and pre-empt possible court challenges over subpoenas. However, a failed or aborted vote could badly damage the investigation’s momentum.
Republican subpoenas require first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden to sit for depositions on Dec. 13 and Dec. 6, respectively.
Other pending House GOP demands seek official documents from Joe Biden’s eight-year vice presidency, including emails sent to accounts registered to pseudonyms and communications following his relatives’ dealings in countries such as China and Ukraine.
The White House has accused House Republicans of mounting an “unconstitutional” probe due to the lack of formal authorization — echoing similar criticism lodged by some Republicans against the impeachments of President Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021.
“The subpoenas and interview requests purport to be in furtherance of what you have characterized as an ‘impeachment inquiry,’ even though no such inquiry has been authorized by the House of Representatives,” White House lawyer Richard Sauber wrote Nov. 17 to the committee chairmen leading the inquiry.
Emmer’s announcement of plans for a floor vote follow House Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent coolness to the idea.
“It’s not required under the law, so I’ve not made a determination on that yet,” Johnson (R-La.) told The Post on Nov. 9. “I’m comfortable personally and constitutionally about where we are right now and about how we have proceeded so far.”
A floor vote to authorize the inquiry in December would precede possible votes on articles of impeachment against Biden next year.
“It does feel as though we’re coming to some sort of an inflection point,” Johnson added at the time.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a recent TV interview that Republicans intend to make a decision on articles of impeachment “early next year” after completing witness depositions and acquiring documents.
Democrats on Wednesday shrugged off chatter of Republicans planning to make the inquiry official.
“This is what binds them together. It isn’t an agenda they are for, it’s a person they are against,” said Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).
White House spokesperson Ian Sams called the investigation a “wild goose chase” — even though GOP investigators have turned up many examples of the president interacting with his son and brother’s foreign associates, as well as communications directly implicating him in those business relationships.
“Yet another patently false claim in their failing wild goose chase. They’ve gotten access to 2,000+ pages of Treasury Dept reports, docs from FBI/DOJ/Natl Archives, dozens of hours of testimony from DOJ/FBI/IRS. Not to mention 15,000+ pages of people’s personal financial records,” Sams tweeted.
On Tuesday, Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell seemingly taunted the impeachment inquiry with an offer for his client to testify publicly on Dec. 13, rather than privately.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) slapped down the proposal, but said the first son would be welcome to return for a public hearing after the deposition.
Comer accused the scandal-plagued first son of “trying to play by his own rules.”
Lowell’s proposal reflected the fact that a public hearing would be dominated by carefully staged attempts to score publicity by both Democrats and Republicans, whereas a closed-door interview would be conducted largely by attorneys for the panel.
Prior public hearings focused on the first family’s business dealings have featured Democrats attempting to flip the script by pointing to former first son-in-law Jared Kushner’s receipt of a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia shortly after he left office as an adviser to President Donald Trump.
Republicans have struggled to keep their own members on message, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stunning spectators in July when she displayed explicit images from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop at a hearing meant to draw attention to IRS whistleblower allegations of a cover-up in the tax fraud investigation of the president’s son.
House Republican leaders hosted a Wednesday press conference to draw attention to a new website that contains information about the investigation.
Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said the site will be “providing the public with a one-stop shop for updates for each of our committees and the evidence they are uncovering.”
“While we take no pleasure in the proceedings here, we have a responsibility to do it,” Johnson said. “We owe it to the American people to continue this process but to do it methodically and transparently.”
The speaker insisted that Republicans are “not prejudging this” and “will follow the facts wherever they lead,” while also describing findings about the Biden family’s business dealings and possible influence peddling as “alarming.”
As a presidential candidate, Biden repeatedly said he “never” talked about business with his family members, but evidence has emerged that he actually interacted with their associates from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine.
While Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden dined at least twice at Washington’s Café Milano with his son’s Eastern European and Central Asian patrons, Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer told the Oversight Committee on July 31 — affirming evidence of those meetings that appeared in laptop files and other witness statements.
Dinner guests included former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-associated entity in 2014; Kenes Rakishev, who purchased the then-second son a $142,000 sports car; and Vadym Pozharsky, board adviser to Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014, when his father assumed control of US policy toward Ukraine.
Joe Biden also met with his relatives’ associates in a pair of Chinese government-backed dealings, including one formed days after Air Force Two touched down in Beijing in 2013 and a second venture in which the elder Biden was penciled in for a 10% cut and invoked in a shakedown text message from Hunter that immediately preceded the flow of $5.1 million to Biden family accounts.