The Daily - The Republican Attempt to Impeach President Biden

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has ordered an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, putting into motion the third formal attempt by Congress to remove a president in the past four years.Luke Broadwater,  a congressional reporter for The Times, explains the unique realities behind this one.Guest: Luke Broadwater, a congressional reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: Mr. McCarthy, who formerly argued that the House must vote before opening an impeachment inquiry, changed his tune this week.What we know about the impeachment case against Mr. Biden.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. The Speaker of the House has ordered an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, putting into motion the third formal attempt by Congress to remove a president in the past four years. Congress to remove a president in the past four years. Today, I spoke with my colleague, Luke Broadwater, about the unique realities behind this one. It's Friday, September 15th. Luke, I want you to walk us through this news conference a few days ago in which Speaker Kevin McCarthy explains this pretty momentous decision to open an impeachment inquiry. Right. Well, the House had just come back from a long August recess and was about to gavel in to start its September session. And Kevin McCarthy calls a snap news conference

outside of the Speaker's office, what we call the small rotunda at the Capitol. And he walks out. Welcome back, everyone. He sets somewhat of a somber tone. You know, the months that we were gone and the weeks House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct. And he begins to lay out why he believes there needs to be an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Now, here's what we know so far. Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family's foreign business dealings. The first thing he says is that President Biden lied about his son, Hunter Biden's business

dealings. There is evidence that President Biden made at least one very prominent false statement and that other times he oversimplified or maybe made misstatements when describing the business interactions. Eyewitnesses have testified that the president joined on multiple phone calls and had multiple interactions.

But then he makes a series of allegations about conduct that Hunter Biden engaged in and attempts to link it to President Biden. And he does it in a way that is not really backed up to date by any hard or concrete evidence. And that really is the link that has been missing so far for the House Republicans, who through their various committees for months now have, of course, been investigating President Biden and his family. I'll give you one real quick example. Dinners resulted in cars and millions of dollars into his sons and his son's business partners. In McCarthy's speech, he suggests that Biden is responsible for getting his son millions of dollars and fancy cars and things like that. And, you know, Hunter Biden did get expensive gifts and millions of dollars from overseas business interests.

What McCarthy is alleging and what Republicans have yet to prove is that it was Joe Biden's intervention that caused those things to happen. on occasion, Joe Biden exchanged niceties with business associates of his son, things like chatting about the weather or a handshake. They have not produced any concrete evidence that he was directly involved in any of these business activities himself. But that's the type of thing the Republicans are digging into to try to prove. That's why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. He makes clear that he believes these are allegations, that they are not proven, that there is no immediate pending impeachment,

but that he believes an impeachment investigation is necessary to get to the bottom of them. We are committed to getting the answers for the American public. Nothing more, nothing less. We will go wherever the evidence takes us. Thank you very much. So in summary, McCarthy is laying out actual evidence of misstatements that President Biden has made while president, perhaps knowingly, perhaps unknowingly, about his son Hunter's business dealings.

And McCarthy is pairing that with allegations for which there's not really much evidence, that Biden was directly involved in those deals back when he was vice president or afterward. So at the heart of this is essentially the claim that before Biden was president, he acted in a corrupt manner. That's exactly right. Most of the allegations stem from a period of time when Joe Biden was vice president, although

they are now alleging also that once he becomes president, his administration is engaged in sort of turning a blind eye to these allegations and not investigating fully the case against Hunter Biden. Basically, that there's a kind of cover-up. Yes, they do allege a cover-up without a ton of evidence, but they allege a cover-up. So just to be clear, no new bombshell evidence implicating President Biden has just been revealed. No single smoking gun that explains McCarthy's decision.

I mean, everything he has laid out here that we're talking about is familiar, and yet it never before merited an impeachment inquiry. That's right. And in fact, the vast majority of the Republican case against Biden has existed for years. I mean, Senate Republicans did a lengthy report in 2020 that has the majority of these allegations in it. Now, they have added some new facts and some new evidence in the past year, but it's not something that fundamentally changes the nature of the case. So if there's not super damning new evidence, Luke, help us understand the timing of this. We have known, of course, that Republicans have wanted to impeach President Biden pretty much since the moment he took office. But why right now? Why this week?

Sure. No, you're exactly right. From day one of Biden's presidency, some members of Congress have started introducing articles of impeachment against him. They've wanted to impeach him over the situation at the border. They've wanted to impeach him over the fentanyl crisis. They've wanted to impeach him over the withdrawal from Afghanistan. So there are a number of reasons why they have gone after Biden from the start. And so for most of that time, Kevin McCarthy has tried to hold off the right wing of his party. He says there should be no impeachment for political reasons. He said Republicans should be above that. They should follow a process where evidence is gathered.

He's also repeatedly maintained that no impeachment inquiry should be opened without a vote of the full House, should be opened without a vote of the full House, that it should have the support of the majority of the body before any impeachment inquiry is ever undertaken. But there's a couple of things you need to understand. One, Kevin McCarthy is clinging to the speakership by the thinnest of margins. Remember, he only became speaker after making a ton of concessions to the hard right. And one of those concessions was agreeing that any one member at any time, if they were dissatisfied with Kevin McCarthy, could call a vote to remove him. And on top of that, remember when we were barreling toward default on our debt and in order to avoid that, McCarthy cut a spending deal with the White House?

Yes, I do. Well, the hard right remains really mad at him for that. And we are entering a period now where McCarthy has to make good on that deal and fund the government by the deadline on September 30th. And the hard right is saying, no way, we're not voting for those bills. And they're telling McCarthy the only way he gets their votes and avoids a government shutdown is to make some concessions. And one of those concessions is impeaching President Biden. So these hard right House Republicans are explicitly saying to the speaker, over whom they have a tremendous amount of leverage given their slim majority. We are angry about

the spending deal you struck with Joe Biden. We don't like it, but you should know that if you want us to support that kind of a budget, you need to go after Joe Biden with something like impeachment. Yes, that's exactly right. Some of them have made that very explicit and said an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden was necessary for their vote to keep the government open. Huh. And so those are the real dynamics at play and the great pressures on Kevin McCarthy.

But I think the thing that really tips it over the edge is the actions of Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida. Matt Gaetz lets it be known that as soon as the House is back in session, he plans to give a blistering floor speech against Kevin McCarthy in which he is going to demand that Kevin McCarthy come into compliance

with the far right or face removal from the speakership. And it's clear that one of the demands Gates is planning to make is that McCarthy get a lot tougher on President Biden and his son Hunter. And the clear implication here is that McCarthy better get going with impeachment or he's going to face some real consequences. So there is now a very direct, imminent, and specific public threat from Matt Gaetz against McCarthy's future as Speaker, unless he immediately complies with this request to open an impeachment inquiry. That's correct. And so Kevin McCarthy is faced with this choice. Either he can keep with a

position he's held for a long time that an impeachment inquiry should only be opened with a full vote of the House. At present, he lacks the votes to do that, I'll note. Or he can change his position, give in to Matt Gaetz's demand, and unilaterally order the impeachment inquiry. And looking at the best way he can try to stay speaker and cling to his speakership, he makes what I think a lot of Republicans believe

was the only choice he could make politically, and that is to go ahead, change his position, reverse his previous statements, and order an impeachment inquiry does exactly what he knows Congressman Gates wants him to do. Yes. So McCarthy gets ahead of Gates. He positions himself as the aggressive actor against President Biden, which is always a good position to be in if you want to appeal to the far right of the Republican Party. But Matt Gaetz doesn't back down. I rise today to serve notice. Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role. He gives the floor speech anyway. speech anyway. The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair. And he proceeds to lay out all the ways Kevin McCarthy is failing at speaker.

But here we are eight months later and we haven't even sent the first subpoena to Hunter Biden. eight months later, and we haven't even sent the first subpoena to Hunter Biden. That's how you know that the rushed and somewhat rattled performance you just saw from the speaker isn't real. At this point during- So he makes clear he was not satisfied with McCarthy's speech. I know that Washington isn't a town where people are known for keeping their word. Well, Speaker McCarthy, I'm here to hold you to yours. So this must have been pretty disappointing for McCarthy because his call for the impeachment inquiry in Gates gives this searing speech anyway.

Well, if you look at it from McCarthy's point of view, he thinks he won the day. If you look at all the headlines and the news coverage, it's all about Kevin McCarthy getting tough with Biden, him moving forward with this impeachment. And that is for someone who has to govern the Republican Party in the House and the far right, that's a good day for Kevin McCarthy when he looks tough on Biden. And there's almost no headlines about Matt Gaetz calling for his removal, which in an alternate scenario could have been the news of the day,

which would have been the far right pressures McCarthy calls for him to step down. Right. And Luke, suffice it to say, this is not the normal course by which an impeachment inquiry, this really grave historic decision, is opened as basically job security to save your job as House Speaker. Well, it's not just about job security. Remember, he's also doing this to try to avoid a government shutdown. Kevin McCarthy is very interested in making sure it's seen that Republicans can operate a functioning government and not plunge the country into chaos.

And so McCarthy may have won the day and he may have staved off the hard right detractors for some time, but now he's stuck with a unilateral impeachment inquiry, which is something that he never wanted to do in the first place. And now he has to live with that

and all the complicated implications that go along with it. We'll be right back. So, look, what will the opening of this impeachment inquiry that Speaker McCarthy is now stuck with do and mean exactly? People like Matt Gaetz have wanted this, but precisely why do they want it? What powers in their minds does it give House Republicans looking into Biden that they didn't already have? Well, functionally, it doesn't actually change all that much. You already have three congressional committees investigating President Biden's administration and President Biden's family. They already have subpoena power.

But Congress derives its authority from the fact that it's part of the legislative process. And so a traditional congressional investigation really only is valid in the eyes of the courts, in the eyes of the law, if they're actually engaged in some attempt at legislating, rewriting a law, changing a statute, introducing new legislation. Right. But if a committee or committees embark on an impeachment inquiry, they no longer have to come up with legislative reasons for what they're doing. They don't have to try to pretend they're really rewriting the ethics code, right? They can simply say, we're demanding these documents because we are investigating whether or not the president committed high crimes or misdemeanors. Got it.

And so it gives them, they believe, a better argument in court should some of their actions get challenged by the Biden administration. Got it. Because up until now, they have, if we're being honest, needed to manufacture a legislative reason to look into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Perhaps they would argue, we want to strengthen influence peddling laws. So that's why we're looking into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. But in reality, that's not quite what they were doing. And now that they have an impeachment inquiry, they don't need such an excuse, and they will have greater legal footing for a really aggressive investigation into both. That's correct. Got it. And I'm curious, were these committees running into any legal limitation in their existing investigations of Hunter and Joe Biden? Or was this just House Republicans anticipating that they might run into these problems? Yeah, it's very much the latter.

anticipating that they might run into these problems. Yeah, it's very much the latter. Republicans have not faced a ton of fight from the Biden White House or from banks as they've been trying to get these records. James Comer, who's the chairman of the Oversight Committee, said in the past six months, every single subpoena he has sent out has been complied with 100%. So it's not because they've been encountering resistance to date. It's that they believe they will encounter resistance and want to have their strongest argument for demanding the records that they are about to demand. So from what you're saying, opening an impeachment inquiry doesn't fundamentally change

these investigations. It gives Republicans more legal confidence in the investigations. But of course, impeachment has another very clear advantage for House Republicans, which is political. Oh, absolutely. It serves a number of purposes for Kevin McCarthy. One, it helps him politically on the Hill. It helps stave off those hard-right Republicans who have been calling for his head. Two, it helps settle a political score. There are a lot of Republicans on the Hill who still are bitter about the impeachments of Donald Trump, particularly the first impeachment, which they argue had thin evidence. That was the impeachment, of course, where Donald Trump was on a phone call

with the leader of Ukraine, and the allegation was that he was shaking him down to try to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and withholding aid because of it. Right. And we should say, dig up dirt not just on Joe Biden, but on Joe Biden's son, Hunter, and many of the things that Republicans are now trying to look into. Yes, time is a flat circle. It is all coming back around again. But they're still bitter over that. And they've been looking to exact revenge on Joe Biden and the Democrats because of the impeachments of Donald Trump. Three, Kevin McCarthy believes it's effective politically because, you know, Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments, 91 felony counts on a range of very serious

allegations against his conduct while he was president and even before he was president. And they're hoping that an impeachment inquiry will muddy the waters in the minds of voters and create the impression that, well, I don't know who's more corrupt between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And so it's hard for me to say as a voter. And then the fourth thing, and I think, you know, this is what they're holding out hope for, is that as they dig deeper into Joe Biden, as they dig deeper into Hunter Biden, as they dig deeper into Hunter Biden, as they turn over more and more stones, that eventually they may in fact find that smoking gun, which to date they have not.

And so they're holding out that if they just keep digging, eventually they might get that really damning piece of evidence. Well, to that point, let's talk about where this all now leads or doesn't lead, this impeachment inquiry, given the nature of an impeachment inquiry and the realities of this very narrow House Republican majority. Well, functionally, for the Hill, an impeachment inquiry can become an all-encompassing exercise. It can suck all the air out of the room of anything else this Congress might want to do. And it will become the focus of a lot of media attention and a lot of the

work that lawmakers are doing. So it will have an intense effect on the operations of the Hill as long as the impeachment inquiry lasts. Politically, though, there are quite a few Republicans who are dreading bringing this to a vote. Yeah, and I mean, just as evidence of that, Kevin McCarthy does not have the votes right now, even among Republicans, to even open an impeachment inquiry if he put this to a floor vote. There are quite a few Republicans on the Hill who say we haven't seen any hard evidence. Everything we've seen is innuendo and circumstantial evidence, and we're not willing to impeach without something concrete. And so in order to try to convince his full membership to go along with this, he's got to produce better and stronger evidence against the president.

Right now, they have 14 Republicans who represent districts that were won by President Biden. And forcing those Republicans to vote to impeach the president who won their districts and is popular with their voters, in some people's view, that's a recipe for losing the House. It's a recipe for a very unpopular vote for these Republicans. And in fact, I was talking to Democrats on the Hill just yesterday who believe that this impeachment inquiry will help them with moderate voters. They think that if moderate voters look at the House and they see Republicans clamoring for both a shutdown and a political impeachment of the president, that that only benefits them in 2024. So bottom line, what you're saying is actually getting to a point where House Republicans would

vote to impeach President Biden is pretty unpopular among Republicans, particularly the moderate ones trying to hold on to their seats and they think might actually benefit Democrats. So it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of enthusiasm for this being anything other than a gesture to appease the Matt Gaetz's of the world. And so time will tell on that. Is it just an investigation that spins its wheels forever and never leads to an actual impeachment vote? It could be. But there's also a belief on the Hill that launching an impeachment inquiry is a bit like jumping out of a plane. Once you're in

the air, you're going to hit the ground. That at some point, after you've investigated enough, you will have to call for the vote and you will have to force this tough vote on the Republicans in the House to see up or down, are they going to move to impeach President Biden? Right. And in which case they may need to do something that they know inflicts a lot of political damage on themselves. Right. And a lot of Republicans will tell you when they look back at the first Trump impeachment, they believe that they did well when the Democrats moved against Trump on the first impeachment politically. And they don't want to see the same thing happen to them in this house.

Well, to that point, Luke, I want to end by asking you to reflect on the reality that we are now enduring our third impeachment process in just a few years. This one, weirdly enough, harkening back to some of the same circumstances as the first impeachment of President Trump, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Ukraine. And despite very real differences between these impeachments, it does feel like we are living in a world where impeachment is now viewed much more than I think we ever imagined it would be

as an everyday tool of political life. Yes, I think that's very much the case. It used to be that impeachment was reserved only for the rarest of circumstances. And in this Congress, we've seen various Republicans have introduced articles of impeachment against five different members of the Biden administration, the Homeland Security Secretary, the Attorney General, up and down the line. And we've long ago, I think, left the idea that you had to prove a high crime to start an impeachment inquiry. And we are now in the phase of the impeachment inquiry has enough political benefits on its own, so might as well go ahead and do it. Oh, Luke, thank you very much.

Thank you. On Thursday, federal prosecutors charged Hunter Biden with lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018 and for illegally possessing the weapon after a plea deal involving those charges collapsed. President Biden, whose administration rolled out what The Times described as a long-planned strategy for defending itself against the House impeachment inquiry. As part of that strategy, White House officials and their allies dismissed the allegations against the president as baseless and debunked, attacked House Republicans for distorting the evidence, and pushed the news media to frame the entire conflict on the president's terms as a naked act of political partisanship. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

On Thursday evening, with their latest contract set to expire at midnight, members of the nation's largest union of autoworkers were preparing to begin a strike today against the three Detroit automakers, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis. The union said that the strike would likely begin with limited walkouts at specific auto plants in an attempt to disrupt carmakers' production while still allowing most workers to keep collecting a paycheck. Negotiations between the union and the carmakers have made little progress. The union has demanded 40% pay increases, arguing that the pay for the automakers' CEOs has risen by the same amount over the past few years. Today's episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Rob Zipko, and Ricky Nowetzki. It was edited by

Paige Cowett, contains original music by Mary Lozano, Diane Wong, and Rowan Emisto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm michael babarro see you tomorrow