WASHINGTON — The House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden is at a crossroad, lacking the political appetite from within the Republican ranks to go forward with an actual impeachment, but facing political pressure to deliver after months of work.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer, made a last-ditch push at Wednesday's hearing, announcing he will seek testimony from Biden himself, saying the Democratic president was either “complicit or incompetent” in his son Hunter Biden's business dealings.
“We need to hear from the president himself,” Comer said at the close of the nearly eight-hour hearing.
It's highly unlikely Biden would appear before the committee.
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The White House told Republicans to “move on,” saying there are “real issues" Americans want to be addressed.
“This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” spokesman Ian Sams said. “Call it a day, pal.”
Having produced no hard evidence of presidential wrongdoing, Republicans seeking testimony from the president is a possible final act. Rather than drawing up articles of impeachment against Biden, Comer is eyeing potential criminal referrals of the family to the Justice Department, a largely symbolic move.
With Hunter Biden declining to appear at the hearing after he testified privately last month, Comer said earlier on Fox News he planned “multiple” criminal referrals.
The GOP-led probe was launched after Republicans seized control of the House in January and were eager to hold Biden to the high bar of impeachment. The House, under a Democratic majority, twice impeached Republican Donald Trump during his presidency.
As Trump and Biden face a likely rematch this November, the probe is grinding on drilling into Hunter Biden’s often complicated business dealings and troubled personal life, particularly when Joe Biden was vice president or out of public office.
The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said in his own opening remarks that a “comedy of errors” of the Biden impeachment inquiry is finally “crashing to an end.”
The committee asserts that the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.
Hunter Biden, who faces firearm and tax charges in separate matters, testified behind closed doors last month in a deposition that filled more than 200 pages but left Comer’s committee without the hard evidence rising to “high crimes and misdemeanors” that would be expected to impeach a president.
Testimony was coming from a cast of unusual witnesses, some with complicated backgrounds.
Jason Galanis is serving a lengthy federal prison sentence in Alabama for fraud schemes and appeared remotely before lawmakers. Tony Bobulinski, a onetime business associate of Hunter Biden, took his claims against the family public during the first Trump-Biden presidential debate in 2020.
The Democrats called Lev Parnas to testify, relying on the convicted businessman who was central to Trump’s first impeachment as a Rudy Giuliani associate working to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden before the 2020 election. Parnas since played a key role in dispelling the House GOP’s main claim of bribery against the Bidens.
Testifying via video, Galanis told lawmakers he expected to make “billions” with Hunter Biden and other associates, using the Biden family name in their foreign business dealings.
Galanis described a particular time in May 2014 when Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone for a brief chat with potential foreign business partners — a Russian oligarch and her husband — during a party at a New York restaurant.
In earlier testimony Galanis, who was sentenced for multiple fraud schemes, acknowledged he unsuccessfully sought a pardon in the final days of the Trump presidency.
Hunter Biden, in his own deposition last month, testified he met Galanis for about 30 minutes 10 years ago.
Bobulinski told the committee that he met twice with Joe Biden in 2017 during a conference in Los Angeles, through Hunter Biden, including once for about 45 minutes, when they talked mostly about family and did not talk business.
While Hunter Biden testified that his father was never involved in his business dealings, Bobulinski declared that “blatant lies.”
“It is clear to me that Joe Biden was the brand,” Bobulinksi said.
Parnas told the committee that in all his work overseas, he has seen “zero evidence” of Biden family corruption.
In launching their Biden impeachment inquiry last year, the House Republicans relied in large part on unverified claims from an FBI informant released by Senate Republicans suggesting Burisma-related payments totaling $10 million to the Bidens were discussed. The now former FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, was arrested last month and pleaded not guilty to charges that he fabricated the bribery allegations.
With the House's slim GOP majority narrowed further by early retirements, Republicans may not have enough support within their ranks to pursue articles of impeachment against the president, especially because Democrats would likely vote against any such charges.