House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) told House Republican members in a closed-door meeting that the House will likely vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden in the next few weeks.
Emmer told members that House leadership plans to bring a vote to the floor to authorize an impeachment inquiry into Biden, according to a source familiar with the meeting. The inquiry was opened by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who announced it without a vote.
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McCarthy’s opening of the impeachment inquiry without a vote to authorize it has been the biggest knock against the effort. The White House has continually cited how, in the past, Republicans, including those leading the impeachment inquiry, criticized Democrats for opening an inquiry into former President Donald Trump in 2019 without a formal vote.
“This is yet another sad attempt by extreme House Republicans to try to distract from their own chaos and dysfunction, including whether to expel their own member and how they are yet again on a path to shut down the government,” Ian Sams, the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, said in a statement about the House likely voting on the inquiry.
He continued, “Their baseless fishing expedition targeting the President has been going on for an entire year and, over and over again, their allegations of wrongdoing by President Biden have been thoroughly debunked. House Republicans have already proven this is an illegitimate exercise not rooted in facts and the truth but only in a political desire to smear the President with lies, and the American people see right through it.”
Under Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), the House is moving to advance the inquiry, including efforts to compel Hunter Biden to sit for a closed-door interview. The president’s son has agreed to speak to Congress publicly, but the chairmen leading the inquiry have also insisted on the transcribed interview with members and committee investigative staff.
The push for Hunter Biden to sit for the closed-door testimony is likely because it would give the committee the opportunity to ask more in-depth questions, as the transcribed interviews are typically more led by the staff and committee lawyers, than a public hearing in which the committee members are required to ask questions and are only given five-minute windows to speak.
House Republicans also unveiled a website detailing the impeachment inquiry on which people can go and follow along with the investigations.
“The House Republican Conference is unveiling an impeachment inquiry website, providing the public with a one-stop shop for updates from each of our committees and the evidence they are uncovering,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said. “It also includes a timeline which lays out exactly what the Biden crime family did to get us to this point.”
Democratic leaders brushed off the threat of a vote to launch an impeachment inquiry, accusing Republicans of highlighting the matter as a distraction for the lack of action in the House.
“It is, as I said, political theater at its worst,” said Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO), who serves as the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “And it is meant to obfuscate away from the realities of the Do Nothing Congress that Republicans have brought here to Washington, D.C., with their majority.”
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House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) echoed similar sentiments, arguing Republicans are only pressing for Biden’s impeachment because it’s the only matter that “binds them together.”
“It isn’t an agenda that they are for,” he said. “It is a person that they are against.”
