America's Talking - House Votes to Back Impeachment Inquiry Into President Joe Biden

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 221 to 212 Wednesday to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, who faces allegations that he personally benefited from and lied about his son's overseas business dealings, which raked in millions of dollars. This vote was not a vote to impeach the president, only to formalize the impeachment inquiry which has been gathering and releasing evidence for months. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan, and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy holidays. Whatever you celebrate this time of year.

We are recording this, Casey, on Friday, December 15th. And there were some major developments this week into the congressional investigation into the Biden family's overseas business dealing. On the same day, Wednesday, that the President's son Hunter Biden defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify behind closed doors, the full U.S. House voted along party lines to formalize their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden himself. Give us details, Casey, and what this means. Yes, on our theme here, it seems the President's son might have some coal in his stocking this year, Dan. Okay, Casey. Okay, yes. No, so Hunter Biden is facing a lot of tax charges already, which we've talked about before on this podcast and written about at thecenter square.com. The evidence continues to stack up against him. And he had a congressional subpoena, basically requiring him to come and testify before Congress this week, which actually coincided with a congressional effort to vote on the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This was not a vote to impeach the president, to be clear. This is not a vote to remove Biden from office. It was a vote

to formalize the impeachment inquiry, which had kind of been unilaterally created, if you remember, by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, you know, a couple months ago. So these things were intersecting, which is really interesting. And Hunter Biden actually showed up at the Capitol, outside the Capitol and spoke to reporters. And he said, I'm not coming to this congressional, I'm not coming to this private deposition, which he was subpoenaed. for. I'm willing to testify publicly. Here I am. Everybody keeps joking. Where's Hunter? Where's Hunter? Here I am. But I'm not going to this private deposition, which is really an interesting move. And he wouldn't be the first person to defy congressional subpoena, to be honest. So that happened.

And then House Republicans led leadership led this effort to formalize the impeachment inquiry into the president to get the whole weight of the House of Representatives behind it. And this does a couple of things. One, this really gives just more political clout to this thing because it was started by a speaker who's now gone. So what is its legitimacy is a valid question when, you know, it was started unilaterally by a speaker who was ousted a few weeks later. So now it has the full backing of the House of Representatives. That's the first thing. The second thing is that legally it might have a better foot hold because, again, it has the backing of the House representatives. It is a real impeachment inquiry.

if they do go to court over these subpoenas, they can say this, you know, the defense cannot say, well, this isn't even a real inquiry because it wasn't voted on by the House. And actually, the Biden administration was saying they were not going to give certain documents because this was not a real impeachment inquiry that was voted on. So this, you know, I think House Republicans hope this will help them get more documents from the Biden administration. And if they ever, if they do have to go to court over some of these subpoenas, they'll have success. And they actually all have said House Oversight Chair James Comer and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan have said that they are going to begin contempt of Congress proceedings against Hunter Biden, which if this goes to fruition, would be a real legal charge against Hunter Biden on top of his other gun and tax charges that he already is facing. So let's stick with this formal inquiry vote. This inquiry into President Joe Biden and how he's connected. to his son, Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings. This has been going on for months and months and months now. The formal vote that happened on Wednesday to formalize the inquiry. You know, we're

heading into, it's December 15th. We're heading into what's almost January 1st, which is, of course, a presidential election year. Presidential election is next November. As I said, the current investigation has been going on for months and months. I mean, how quickly is this going to, the thing going to move now? Is this going to quicken the pace of the investigation, or do we still have months and months and months more of investigation that this thing could actually be leading into up to election time almost. Right. I mean, that is a good question. No one really knows for sure, but I suspect that we have months and months and months, the latter, which you said, a couple of reasons for that. One, I think there is, you know, I don't think this investigation is without merit or

without basis, but it definitely is a political component to it. And the more you can drag it up to that November election day, the more it can help Republicans. It can make, you know, Democrats look bad. Of course, the president who, at least for now, is running for reelection, it's going to make him look bad. And that goes down ballot. You know, whenever, however the presidential candidate for the party is doing will affect the races, you know, state races, Senate races, Congress races, even judges races down the ballot. Because there's a lot of people who they wouldn't really get be bothered to go vote in a local race, but they will go vote for president. And they might just say, just check all the R's or all the Ds, all the Republicans and all the Democrats. And so the lead

of your candidate can really make a big difference down the ballot. And so there is a little bit of that political motivation here. If you can just make Biden look even more and more corrupt, and Biden is losing just about every swing state, Dan, to former President Donald Trump. I think the latest Bloomberg polling shows that our polls, our poll, the Center Square Voters' voices polls showed him not, you know, not dominating Trump either. And so that, that is, there's a political element here that I think is in Republicans' interest to drag this out, especially because the idea that they're really going to get enough votes to oust the president is dubious. And so this is about investigating him. It's about bringing the evidence about maybe

pressuring him to resign and step aside. And the evidence is building up. Go ahead. I was just going to say, just a quick note about the process. If it comes to it, the U.S. House, which Republicans have a slight majority in, they would vote to impeach, but that just means they're bringing charges against the president. The Senate, where Democrats have a very slight majority, would then put the president on trial and the likelihood of them actually convicting him and ousting him from office is slim and none, probably closer to none than slim. Right. I think they need a two-thirds majority to convict. And so it's been a very long time since

the Senate had a two-thirds majority to do anything, let alone something like convicting the president in this modern very split time. I think it'll be very difficult, like you said. But you can create enough evidence and enough pressure to where it seems irrefutable. I mean, former President Donald Trump was never, you know, convicted in any impeachment, but a lot of evidence came out that made him look pretty bad and really hurt his presidency and, you know, that the media used to slow him down and destroy his political cloud and eventually hurt him electorally, right? So it could be the same playbook over. And, and let's, we, we can't ignore the fact, too, that former President Trump himself faces nearly a hundred counts on four separate criminal

indictments against him. So you have two, right now, you have two candidates. Trump, of course, by far the frontrunner in the GOP primary, President Biden, really the sole candidate in the Democratic primary. You have two leading candidates facing significant charges. Yeah, that's right. And so, and they're both very old, too, Dan. I mean, that's another, two of the biggest memes in this election have been that the president's too old and the president's corrupt, but then you, you know, When both candidates are about 80 and both have all these accusations against them, it's kind of hard to know how to differentiate yourself in that kind of race. Casey, we are pretty much out of time, but this is a story that, of course, is going to dominate the news cycle for the next several months. Who knows for how long, just as both former President Trump, current President Biden, are campaigning against each other.

This is going to be an interesting election year. listeners, of course, can keep up with all of our reporting on this topic at the CenterSquare.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalib. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe. Knowledge is power, and you deserve to know what happens in your state government. That's why the nonprofit Franklin News Foundation is bringing you straight news journalism through the Center Square, reporting on state authorities and publishing stories that show where your money goes and who spends it. By supporting the Center Square, you can track politicians use of taxpayer money and demand transparency from elected officials.

This is how we can equip everyday Americans to hold their government accountable. Become a supporter of Franklin Today at franklinnews.org slash donate.