House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he expects the House GOP’s investigations into the foreign business activities of President Biden’s family to rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry.
“When Biden was running for office, he told the public he has never talked about business. He said his family has never received a dollar from China, which we prove is not true,” McCarthy told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, referencing Biden’s previous statements that he did not talk to his son, Hunter Biden, about his foreign business activities.
McCarthy also mentioned two IRS whistleblowers who alleged that prosecutors slow-walked an investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, and House GOP investigations finding that millions of foreign funds traveled through shell companies to Biden family members and associates.
“We’ve only followed where the information has taken us. But Hannity, this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy said.
“Because this president has also used something we have not seen since Richard Nixon: Use the weaponization of government to benefit his family and deny Congress the ability to have the oversight,” McCarthy said.
In response to McCarthy’s comment, the White House accused House Republicans of failing to focus on important issues.
“Instead of focusing on the real issues Americans want us to address like continuing to lower inflation or create jobs, this is what the @HouseGOP wants to prioritize. Their eagerness to go after @POTUS regardless of the truth is seemingly bottomless,” Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said in a tweet.
Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) released an FBI form that documented unverified allegations of corruption stemming from Hunter Biden’s work with Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
McCarthy did not use those unproven allegations as a basis for an impeachment inquiry, but its release added fuel to Republican skepticism of the foreign business dealings.
More on the Biden probes from The Hill
- Democratic memo takes aim at GOP-released FBI form with Biden-Burisma allegations
- Hunter Biden prosecutor willing to testify before Congress
- FBI ‘expressly’ opposed GOP release of unverified Biden tip
The New York Post reported Monday that former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer plans to tell the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a closed-door interview this week that Hunter Biden would put then-Vice President Biden on speakerphone during meetings with foreign business partners.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a briefing Monday that the president was never in business with his son.
“If they really ran it for foreign countries, why didn’t you get money from France, from Germany, from U.K.? Why is it China, Romania, these countries that have real challenges and had problems going through,” McCarthy said on Fox News.
“I believe we will follow this all the way to the end, and this is going to rise to an impeachment inquiry — the way the Constitution tells us to do this — and we have to get the answers to these questions,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy just last month floated an impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Merrick Garland, based on Garland contradicting IRS whistleblowers about the authority of the prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden to bring charges in other jurisdictions.
A Morning Consult poll conducted June 22-24 found that 30 percent of registered voters thought that it should be a “top priority” for Congress to investigate whether President Biden should be impeached, including 11 percent of Democrats, 24 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans.
And 27 percent of registered voters overall said that it should be a “top priority” for Congress to investigate Hunter Biden’s finances, including 12 percent of Democrats, 24 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans.