Biden impeachment inquiry ‘perhaps makes him unelectable,’ Dean Phillips says

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), a 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, suggested in an interview that the impeachment inquiry into President Biden could make him “unelectable” as a general election nominee.

Phillips said in an interview with Semafor published Monday that while he hasn’t seen evidence suggesting Biden did anything wrong — a point stressed by the president’s defenders and even some GOP critics — he maintained the accusations around the inquiry could be damaging.

“I don’t see the evidence of it, but yes, when your own son and your own brother are clearly, at the very least unethical and at worst, doing illegal things — my goodness, of course the country pays attention to it,” Phillips told the outlet.

“People do believe that it perhaps makes him unelectable — somehow, it conflates him with the Trump family’s indiscretions,” the House Democrat added.

Phillips said he’d vote against opening an impeachment inquiry.

The Hill has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.

Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was charged in a second indictment late last week as a result of the probe headed by special counsel David Weiss into the president’s son’s financial dealings.

Hunter Biden now faces three felony tax charges in relation to tax evasion and filing a false return, as well as six misdemeanor charges for failure to pay taxes between 2016 and 2019. President Biden was not mentioned in the indictment.

In an interview Sunday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), an ally of the president’s, said he was confident that charges against the president’s son would not dissuade voters from supporting the president.

“I think Hunter Biden is going to be held accountable in court for any violations of the law that he’s committed. And the American public are going to get the chance to watch that play out in real time,” Murphy said. “But what I am absolutely certain of is that the American public are going to see a distinct contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.”