The NPR Politics Podcast - McCarthy Calls For Impeachment Inquiry Into Biden

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

The speaker of the House cited "allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption" in his reasoning to direct House committees to begin the proceedings, which will start at a date to be determined. The White House called it a "political stunt" in a statement, and not all Republican lawmakers are on board with the idea just yet.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.This episode was produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. 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, it's Prenuv. I'm in Great Falls, Virginia, where I just had a bowl of cereal for dinner. This podcast was recorded at... 2.53 p.m. on Tuesday, September 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be addicted to honey bunches of oats.

All right, here's the show. A good bowl of cold cereal is highly underrated in terms of meals. It can really hit sometimes. Breakfast all the time. Breakfast for dinner is a go-to at my house. Absolutely. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House.

And earlier today, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he is directing House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden. House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption. Republicans have already been investigating the Biden family for months, and in particular, the business dealings of Biden's son, Hunter. Those investigations have not produced any clear evidence that the president took official actions to personally benefit himself or his family. That fact was pointed out today by White House spokesman Ian Sams, who dismissed the announcement as, quote, extreme politics at its worst. All right, Deirdre, this announcement today,

it is not particularly surprising. We knew this day might come. But why is it happening today? I mean, we've seen the speaker leaning into it for months. But it's happening today because the House is coming back from weeks of a summer recess. And conservatives have been pushing the speaker and House Republican leadership to move on impeachment. They are unhappy following multiple indictments of former President Trump, who has a ton of allies in the House Republican conference, and feel like the Justice Department was weaponized against Trump and Democrats when they were in charge impeached Trump. So House Republicans should move forward to impeach President Biden. And I think the speaker coming out this morning before Matt Gaetz went to the floor and before other House conservatives are scheduled to do a press conference was his way of saying, I'm listening. I'm moving. We need to stay united to move this process forward. And McCarthy's going to need support from a lot of these conservatives to avoid a government shutdown. And I think maybe he thinks giving them this political bone will help them get on board

with some sort of stopgap bill to avoid a shutdown. McCarthy does not need to have a full House vote to move forward with an impeachment inquiry. Speakers can direct committees to do such things on their own. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before him did just that. The difference is Republicans criticized her then, and McCarthy previously had said that he would bring something up for a vote if he wanted to move forward. It doesn't look like Republicans are going to do that. And I think that begs the question, could the speaker even pass an impeachment inquiry resolution today if he brought it to the floor? I think it's obvious he can't. I mean, I think that's why he reversed himself. I mean,

he's been saying for weeks on the record, it's not one person's declaration to launch an impeachment inquiry. I'm not going to do what Nancy Pelosi did. But now he is. And I think that reflects the fact that there are a bunch of House moderate Republicans in swing districts that really don't want to vote on this. And if they can say for now, oh, I support an inquiry, let's see what the committees come up with. I mean, that's what they've been saying for several months. Let's see what the evidence is. Let's see what the committees develop. But at some point, if the committees do report out articles of impeachment, all those moderates are going to have to vote on the House floor. Franco, I can't imagine anyone at the White House was blindsided by today's announcement. They've probably had their responses prepared for quite some time.

How are they responding? And I should note, it's not just the White House now. It's also the Biden-Harris campaign. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, they had brought in like extra staff months ago kind of preparing for this. I mean, and as you know, they had a very well-coordinated response, putting out, you know, all these statements to press on social media. They even had the people, you know, grabbing all these quotes from Republicans, talking about how there was no evidence and how they were not there yet for an investigation. You know, the White House spokesman, Ian Sams, he argued that Republicans have been investigating this for nine months and they haven't turned up anything. So this is absolutely something that they have been planning for, watching for, and they've gone immediately on the attack. The campaign, as you know, they just came out with a statement attacking McCarthy

as kind of turning the House into a surrogate for the Trump campaign. I do think impeachment elevates the intensity and the talk of impeachment elevates the intensity around these investigations. And I do wonder if it does put more pressure on either the campaign or the White House or the president himself to talk about something that Joe Biden has been very reluctant to talk about, which is his son. He's very protective of his family. He's very aggravated by attacks against his family. But politically speaking, at some point, do you think that the White House has to confront that issue more directly and head on? has nothing to do with the president. Well, an impeachment inquiry does have to do with the president. And it's going to be much harder because there's going to be more questions raised. It is now an official process that involves the president. And, you know, in these

inquiries, there's a lot of uncertainty about what is going to come out, what is going to hear. And you know for sure House Republicans are going to make public anything that they find, whether it has anything to do with Hunter Biden or not, that would put the president in kind of a darker light. So, you know, he's going to have to respond to this stuff. And I think you will also hear, as you kind of are even more from the Biden campaign, they have been more aggressively putting out statements, talking about this, and kind of using it in a way to their advantage politically, or at least trying to turn it to their advantage as much as they can politically, by painting House Republicans as kind of a radical party and taking over control of the

Republican Party itself. LESLIE KENDRICK Did you get a sense that anything substantively changes with this? The speaker said that James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio will lead the investigation. These are two chairmen who have already been leading the investigations. Is anything fundamentally different going forward? No. I mean, there's also a third committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, that's been

involved in investigating President Biden and Hunter Biden. And McCarthy noted those three chairs would essentially keep doing what they're doing. So I don't see anything functionally changing. I think they have like an official label on it and politically an answer to the base and to former President Trump who wants this effort to move forward. So yeah, I think we'll just have more witnesses, more letters to the administration. And Republicans think now that it's called an impeachment inquiry, there will be some new pressure on the White House to respond to some of these requests. But, you know, I'm not sure how that's going to work with the

counsel's office at the White House. But does an impeachment resolution at this point seem almost inevitable? Because when you're the speaker and you make an announcement like this, you better have a plan. And it feels pretty hard to put the impeachment genie back in the bottle now. Agreed. I don't think there's any turning back for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy now that the genie is out of the bottle. I do think there are a lot of unanswered questions, as Franco was raising in terms of the specifics and what the specific articles or charges could be coming out of these various committees. But I do see a vote as inevitable. Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, who had been investigating Biden last year with Senator Grassley in the Senate, was saying he doesn't see any scenario where there would be any conviction in the Senate. He admitted that's not happening, but he did say that, you know, he thought that the process was now moving ahead because they had more hard evidence to talk about.

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back. And we're back. And Deirdre, you've spent a lot of the last several months tracking these Republican committee investigation efforts into the Biden family. I'm not going to make you go through all of it on this podcast, but can you kind of give us a sense of the type of evidence Republicans believe that they have in their hands to make a case against Joe Biden? I guess, in other words, how much there is already there and how much there is yet to be found? I don't think there's a lot there yet. I think one notable set of evidence is IRS whistleblowers have testified before a House committee that the Justice Department and the IRS slow walked the investigation of Hunter Biden on various tax charges, and that because they slow walk this investigation,

the statute of limitations ran out for felony tax charges. And then we saw recently a plea deal that fell apart, which included some misdemeanor tax charges. So there are several, you know, career IRS officials on the record talking about their experience and how the higher ups slow walked things. There's also another group of folks that House Republicans want to bring in, including Hunter Biden's business associates. And there's some testimony from his associate, Devin Archer, that then Vice President Biden participated in conference calls, stopped by a business dinner and said hello. But as you noted, there's no hard evidence linking Joe Biden to any financial benefit from Hunter Biden. This seems like one of those tricky, murky areas of politics where it's easy to find some mud, but maybe not necessarily a crime. Because Hunter Biden, to be clear, made a ton of money in the influence industry in Washington.

But the influence industry is legal. Lobbying is a protected activity. And a lot of the things that he did might not be illegal, that he was a lobbyist. And there's fewer easier cases to be made to the American people than being against, quote, dirty Washington lobbying activity. There's no question about that. I think there are few people who would argue that Hunter Biden is not trading on his name. But he is, as you're kind of noting, he's far from alone in doing that. It is a time-honored tradition in Washington. Both parties, presidents, family members, their sons, their daughters, members of Congress, their spouses. I mean, you go to both parties. This happens all the time. And it's not a savory part of

Washington, but it is a part of Washington. And it happens so much. And, you know, a lot of these members of Congress, you know, who are pushing for this likely have, you know, family members who are in the same industry. Family members in the lobbying industry is not an unusual phenomenon in Washington, for sure. Deirdre, a lot of this puts a lot of political pressure on Kevin McCarthy as well. I mean, we have talked a lot on this podcast about how much pressure he continues to face from the hard right, how he's got a very treacherous few months ahead in trying to navigate spending deals and avoiding a government shutdown. And today he just threw on top of all of that, navigating a potential impeachment process through the House. I think there's no doubt that his job is on the line in how he handles this and the upcoming spending fight. And I think that's part of the reason why he opted to and he has such a narrow House majority, and he's got to realize he's putting a lot of his own moderates in a difficult position in a vote

that they eventually could take on articles of impeachment. And I think that's a big risk, because it's such a small majority. And a lot of the folks who represent districts that Joe Biden won in 2020 represent a lot of independent voters who don't think that this impeachment thing is such a great idea and want to hear more about how Republicans are governing. And right now they're focused on impeachment and there's a possible government shutdown. So I think those are two big things that could cost a lot of his members a lot of grief at home. Danielle Pletka Franco, I spoke to Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina today, and he sort of joked that there's been four impeachments in American history, and he's played a role in three of them.

The point being that impeachment is becoming a bit of a regular occurrence in American politics. And I wonder if this is a new reality. Does it sort of dull the impact this type of proceeding is supposed to have with the public? You know, it certainly feels that way. I mean, I think that's certainly something that we heard also in some of the statements from McConnell and other Republicans who are like, there are better things to do right now. There is a lot of concern that that is being dulled, especially when there is a lack of evidence about moving forward. I mean, I think you want it to be serious. But on the other hand, I think for some of these Republicans, they are doing this simply to, in some ways, to help Trump by kind of throwing in the mix more investigations, more confusion,

in order to a little bit distract from some of the investigations of him. There are potentially some benefits for Biden here. I mean, there is precedent for those who have faced impeachments to actually gain politically. Clinton, you know, had some of his highest numbers when he was under impeachment. Trump also. And I think the people at the White House and the campaign recognize this as well, that although it's going to be pretty uncomfortable for the next few months, in the long run, it could be politically beneficial for Biden because of Republican overreach. Yeah. All right. That is it for us today, but we'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.

And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.