The NPR Politics Podcast - House Republicans, In Search Of A Crime, Launch Biden Impeachment

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

The hearing focused on the business practices of his son's efforts and insinuations that, while serving as vice president, Biden used his office to enrich himself or his family. So far, the Republicans have no substantive evidence to support that claim. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and political correspondent Susan Davis.The podcast is was produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi there, this is Peg in Portland, Oregon. I just celebrated my 72nd birthday by jumping off the side of a mountain in Chamonix, France. What? With a professional pilot and a big pink paragliding sail, of course.

This podcast was recorded at... 5.39 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, September 28th, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be remembering flying over the French Alps. That's a goals, isn't it? 72nd birthday, jumping out of a plane. No, that is never my goal. And I love that she said, of course I was connected to a paraglider. What else would you have been doing? I am extremely risk averse, so I respect a risk taker. Yes. I don't even go on roller coasters where you just go up and come down because that seems too much like jumping off of a thing for no good reason. I do the roller coasters. I probably wouldn't do a hang glider realistically.

Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. House Republicans held their first hearing in the impeachment inquiry of President Biden, but it was the president's son, Hunter, who was featured most prominently in today's hearing. Republicans are trying to make the case that the president illegally benefited from his son's business dealings. Here's James Comer. He's a Republican from Kentucky who chairs the House Oversight Committee. Now, what were the Bidens selling to make all this money? Joe Biden himself. Joe Biden is the brand. So that's the argument. But none of the four witnesses at today's hearing had any knowledge of wrongdoing by the president.

And the two legal scholars called by the committee said the constitutional threshold for articles of impeachment has not been met. So, Sue, I want to start there. What is the case that Republicans are making? Republicans have made a pretty damning case against Hunter Biden. You know, they have been investigating the president's son for the better part of the past eight months, and they have ultimately revealed a number of documents, testimony, whistleblower allegations that point a picture of Hunter Biden using his father's political position to make millions of dollars to secure lobbying clients, oftentimes from clients from foreign nations, and that all of this created, in the words of the speaker, a culture of corruption around the Biden

family. The problem, as it was articulated throughout the day, is that while they do paint a pretty sordid picture of the lifestyle and the professionalism of Hunter Biden, there is no direct line drawn to any official action or money received because of Hunter Biden's work directly connected to then Vice President Joe Biden. And even Republicans on the committee couldn't really offer any smoking gun. In the words of Jamie Raskin, he said there was no smoke and no gun. If the Republicans had a smoking gun or even a dripping water pistol, they would be presenting it today. But they've got nothing on Joe Biden. So that, again, is Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Democrat ranking member of this committee.

Sue, more broadly, how are Democrats on the panel framing this process? You know, you hear the term sham a lot. They say it's baseless. Raskin is a familiar voice for a lot of people because he played a central role in the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump. He's also a constitutional law professor. He played a bit of an outsized role in today's hearing. You know, Democrats, at least for now, have the benefit of facts on their side. There isn't a direct crime or allegation against the president. Jonathan Turley, who's one of the legal scholars who testified today, said he did believe that Republicans had unearthed enough evidence surrounding Hunter Biden's business dealings that a congressional investigation was merited. But he very point blank said, based on what the committee has

found so far, it did not meet the constitutional threshold for impeachment, which is, of course, bribery, treason or other high crimes and misdemeanors. And can I just say that was a pretty stunning moment because Jonathan Turley is a regular on Fox News, a regular critic of Joe Biden on Fox News. And he was called by the Republicans to witness for the committee. A witness for Republicans, right. Right. So here is this guy who was supposed to be helping them make their case. And instead he said, well, at the moment, you don't have a case.

But he went on to say there are plenty of questions. There are lots of questions. You could keep asking questions, seemed to be the vibe of all of the witnesses that Republicans called? Yeah, we heard several of the Republican-called witnesses say they don't see enough evidence yet for impeachment, but they think there are questions to be asked. I mean, what are they teeing up something else here? Well, I think one of the big questions is where does it go from here? We know everything that the Republicans have found so far, but the big looming questions are how far are they willing

to go to go at the president? One of the Republicans on the committee today suggested the next logical step would be to try to subpoena more of Hunter Biden's bank records. They're trying to look for a direct financial connection between Hunter Biden's business dealings and how Joe Biden may have allegedly profited from that. But there's nothing really specific around it. I think both in terms of the substance of the investigation and the political stakes of this, to me, one of the big looming questions is, will they ultimately subpoena Hunter Biden or any member of the Biden family? You know, I think that would elevate the focus of this inquiry and also the risk of political

blowback. If you are looking like you are going after the president's family, the American public tends to look at those things differently than the actions of elected officials themselves. But I would note, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said just a few days ago that Republicans would ultimately subpoena Hunter Biden. He just said they would do it at the, quote, appropriate time. We just don't know what that is. Sue, these allegations all happened before Biden became president. How much does that matter? I think this is a really interesting point here. And I actually made a point to ask Jonathan Turley about this during one of the breaks. And he put this in his testimony before the committee that there is a question about can impeachment be retroactive?

Can you throw a president out of office for something he did before he came into office? He is skeptical that you can make that case for impeachment. What he said and what he his testimony that he submitted to the committee is that retroactive behavior could be considered impeachable offenses, particularly if you look at if the sitting president lies about that past conduct or tries to cover it up or uses White House resources to deflect from it. But he said if you couldn't draw a direct line into the sitting office of the president, it would probably fundamentally weaken a case for impeachment. Now, obviously, legal scholars differ tremendously on the causes and reasoning behind impeachment, but he wasn't that ambiguous about it. So, Sue, you mentioned Speaker McCarthy has signaled openness to pursuing this further. As we noted, this hearing was led by Republicans on one committee, the House Oversight Committee. How does the Republican conference as a whole feel about this process? You know, I think a significant segment of the Republican conference thinks they already have enough to move forward with articles of impeachment. You have members of the far right, people like Marjorie

Taylor Greene, who have already introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden. I would say the vast majority of Republicans support at least the inquiry. It's certainly become a big base issue as if you look at polling, you know, Republican voters pretty much think that Joe Biden should be impeached even if there's not enough evidence to do it. Tells you how partisan these things tend to fall. I would note this. When Democrats move forward with impeachment against Donald Trump, they didn't initially get the authorization of the full House. At the time, Kevin McCarthy condemned Nancy Pelosi and Democrats for doing this, saying it undermined the seriousness of an impeachment inquiry.

That is exactly what Kevin McCarthy has done with this impeachment inquiry. He has declared it without getting the full authorization of the House. I think that tells you that if he were to put it to a full floor vote, he might not get the votes to authorize the impeachment inquiry. Some Republican members of the conference, I would note Ken Buck of Colorado is one, has very publicly said that he thinks that they should move on from impeachment, that they don't have the evidence. And unless they find something really damning against the president, they should focus on the things that matter more to people to win elections like the economy or any other number of policy issues. And of course, this is a non-starter in the Senate. So yeah, I mean, not only do you have a super high threshold of conviction in the Senate, but you already have multiple Republican senators like Mitt Romney of Utah,

Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has sort of leaned out on the question of an impeachment trial. And there really hasn't been many Republicans to say that they think that the threshold is there. That said, we're in the middle of this investigation. We don't know how long it's going to go. We don't know what else Republicans might find. We can't preclude that they never find anything about Joe Biden. I do think one of the political intentions here is to keep this running as long as possible and most certainly into 2024 to overlap with the presidential election. And it's time for a quick break. We'll have more in just a moment.

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Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. Tam, what's the White House saying about all this? Well, the White House is definitely drawing attention to Jonathan Turley and his view that the investigation isn't ripe. And they are more significantly shouting from the rooftops that the government is about to shut down this weekend. And instead, all of the political focus today was on this hearing. The government is about to shut down. And so literally every 30 minutes, a White House spokesperson sent out a new statement counting down the hours and

minutes until the government shuts down and says this is not serving the American people and this is not even a very good distraction from the government shutdown that seems quite imminent. This was also a point that Democrats on the committee tried to make over and over again today. And starting with Raskin, they had like an iPad that had a real time countdown clock to when the government would shut down and Democrats would pass it down the aisle and have it in front of them as they were making their points. I do think that the looming potential and likely government shutdown probably did overshadow this today in terms of both news coverage and public interest. I think a shutdown has real-time implications for millions of Americans and certainly many federal workers and U.S. troops and other people. So I don't know if it was able to break through in a way that I think Republicans are hoping to use these hearings to do.

But Comer did also make the point that if the government shuts down, if it does, and whoever long it may go, it would not stop the work of the committee and they would continue with the impeachment inquiry in a shutdown. Tam, House Republicans, some of them spent the day talking about President Biden. How did he spend the day? Yeah, he was actually out West. He was in Arizona giving a speech honoring the late Senator John McCain, who was a friend of his, even though he was a Republican. And it really was a split screen because the president was talking about his relationship across the aisle with this Republican senator. And he was talking about the need of all Americans to shore up the institutions of the United States because the American public has lost faith in institutions like Congress and the judiciary and the executive branch.

And then you had this hearing happening on Capitol Hill that in many ways reaffirmed the view that many Americans have of Congress. Speaking of the American public, we talked a moment ago about the partisan divide over this question of impeachment. But what do Americans as a whole think about this? Yeah, I was just talking to a pollster named Sarah Longwell, who polls swing voters and does focus groups with Trump voters. What she said was that swing voters just don't care about Hunter Biden yet. I think that's the Republican hope is that they can ultimately shift that public opinion. Right. And I think that notably, these investigations that have been going on all year weren't getting a lot of attention when it was just like an oversight committee hearing or

the House Ways and Means Committee found some documents. But as soon as they stamped it with impeachment, it got more attention. It elevated it in a way, which was certainly the intent. And, you know, as we watched this hearing and it really didn't have evidence of wrongdoing by the president, and we're wondering, well, what is the point of this? Part of the point seems to be to be able to continue doing this, to justify continuing to have hearings, continuing to make at times baseless allegations that can muddy the waters, that can make Joe Biden or his family look bad and feed into the narrative that former President Trump, the Republican frontrunner, four times indicted, his narrative of Crooked Joe. And it's happening, of course, as a presidential

campaign heats up. We've been hearing messages from former President Donald Trump about this, trying to paint Joe Biden and his family as corrupt. It's a message we've heard from him continually, and I imagine we'll continue to hear, particularly if Republicans keep pushing this. I mean, what are the politics here? You know, I think Biden, at least currently, seems to be taking a page out of the Bill Clinton playbook is while Republicans on Capitol Hill are pursuing an impeachment of you, look as presidential and above all of it as you can focus on the economy, give the public appearance of confidence and presidential actions that you're not going to be drug into the mud. The challenge I wonder about Biden, especially if the public does become

more plugged into this, if Republicans do come up with more revelations that might directly target the president. He has been really uncomfortable talking about his son. The White House doesn't want to do it. They're trying to keep this separate from their lane. But it is going to bleed into the presidential election. And I do think that how Biden navigates that, he's going to get asked about it. Right. There's going to be debates. There's going to be more public access.

There's going to be more press interviews. And the White House doesn't seem to have a particularly good message. And look, like, it's really easy to make the case to the public that the influence industry is sleazy. You don't need a lot of evidence. People already have that sort of ingrained in their DNA. And I think he needs to be able to reassure people that he isn't just part of that sleazy Washington. He's a 50-year creature of the city. You know, there's already a lot of voter doubts about him. You don't need anything that gives any more doubt to that, especially for this, like, really narrow subset of people that will ultimately decide the election.

I think every little hit matters. All right. Well, let's leave it right there. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.