This week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced the opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. "These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives," McCarthy explained. The impeachment inquiry will give the House Republicans a better legal defense against claims that any subpoenas they issue exceed the scope of congressional authority. More importantly, it signals to the American public the seriousness of Republican intent to make Biden's corruption the top issue in the 2024 election.
For those complaining about Republican politicking, turnabout is surely fair play. Former President Donald Trump was impeached not once but twice; neither time did Democrats so much as allege a statutory crime. They relied on the fact that impeachment is a political response, not a criminal one -- true as far as it goes, but precedent-setting in the context of prior impeachments. They pursued impeachment inquiries without so much as a vote in the House. The genie is out of the bottle, and it isn't going back in anytime soon.
The allegations against Biden are already damning. So is the evidence. Biden used his son, Hunter, as a cutout to clear cash from foreign sources on behalf of the Biden family. That's all part of a decadeslong pattern by which Biden has used his political power and influence to benefit his family. Back in the 1970s, Jimmy Biden, Joe's brother, somehow obtained generous loans from a local bank to open a rock club, despite little in the way of collateral; Joe was sitting on the Senate Banking Committee at the time and ended up pressuring the bank when Jimmy fell behind on his loans. In 1996, Joe cashed out his home by selling it to the vice president of MBNA in a sweetheart deal; MBNA would also hire Hunter fresh out of law school. MBNA was one of Biden's biggest donors and a beneficiary of his credit card policy largesse. In the words of Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger, "The Bidens regularly intermingled personal, political, and financial relationships in ways that invite!
d questions about whether the public interest was getting short-changed."
All of this came to a head when Joe attained the vice presidency. Hunter forged relationships, with his father's aide, in China and Ukraine; Joe would call into business meetings to "talk about the weather." Hunter joined the board of Burisma, where he made an extraordinary amount of money; in return, he promised connection with his father. In December 2015, Biden went to Ukraine, where he demanded that Viktor Shokin, a prosecutor looking into Burisma, be fired, threatening to withdraw $1 billion in American aid. During this time, a confidential human source later told the FBI that Burisma's CFO said that he had hired Hunter "to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems."
That was merely the most egregious apparent abuse of power. There were dozens of others.
Was Joe benefitting from Hunter's business arrangements? We hear from the media that there is no evidence to suggest he was. But that's obviously a lie: scoring benefits for your drug-addicted, sexually deviant son is certainly a benefit that accrues to Joe. And we also have a text directly from Hunter to his daughter Naomi in 2019: "I hope you can all do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It's really hard. But don't worry. Unlike Pop, I won't make you give me half your salary."
All of this is predicate to Biden's behavior as president. Thanks to whistleblowers, we know that the Biden DOJ attempted to cut a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden to end any investigation into these matters. In this case, the cover-up may be just as bad as the crime.
In the end, the American voters will give their verdict on Biden; with Democrats in control of the Senate, he won't be removed from office. But Republicans are right to remind Americans that Biden isn't a decent man restoring honor to the Oval Office. He's a career-long corrupt politician who simply got lucky in his enemies at the right time.