What Difference Does a Formal Impeachment Authorization Make?

Today the U.S. House of Representatives held a vote to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. With a vote of 221-212, many House Republicans say that they anticipate an impeachment article of bribery against Biden.

According to an article by Fred Lucas in The Daily Signal, Rep. Darrell Issa (Rep-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, believes that bribery could be the basis for a potential article of impeachment. 

“It certainly appears as though the possibility of bribery, a known offense under impeachment, is on the table,” Issa told The Daily Signal Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “Monies did flow to the home of the president, they did flow to accounts of the president when he was vice president, and his actions show that he favored entities that Hunter Biden was representing. Additionally, his repeated false statements about it continue to be an element of the impeachment inquiry.”

As noted by Issa, many of the suspicious actions by Joe Biden took place while he was vice president. This could be a problem in that presidents have previously been impeached for behavior occurring during presidency. Issa said, “One of the challenges we’re facing is that it’s not been tested.”

Democrats have continued to insist that there is no evidence linking President Biden to Hunter Biden’s business. They opposed the impeachment investigation, and they voted against making it a formal impeachment investigation. Republicans offered their own opinions about evidence.

“Some of the people that say they don’t see evidence, I think they are going to come around,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The Daily Signal. “We are talking very specifically bribery. You can look at Ukraine. That looks obvious. You can look at China. Obvious. You could look at Moscow, funds that changed hands from Russia. Yes, those are all obvious bribery. Those would be an impeachable offense.”

Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., first hesitated to get ahead of the inquiry by suggesting potential articles. But she said that “bribery is an obvious one.”

“We need to use the words that are actually in the Constitution and bribery is clearly one of them,” Hageman told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

“Hunter Biden had no skill set to sell. He had no expertise in Ukrainian oil and gas development and operations. He had no expertise on Chinese Communist Party issues. He had one asset and his asset that he could sell was access to his father.”

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution says that grounds for impeaching a civil officer are “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

President Biden has repeatedly denied being involved in Hunter’s business deals. Hunter Biden told reporters today that President Biden had “no financial involvement” in his businesses. A White House statement from the POTUS called the inquiry a baseless stunt. POTUS claimed that he is busy doing the work of the American people, while congressional Republicans are attacking him with lies.

However, there is a lot of evidence showing that Republicans are finding evidence that POTUS, as vice president, did deal with his son’s business associates. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released one piece of evidence in July. He “released an FBI form that showed a confidential informant reported that executives with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, paid a $5 million bribe to then-Vice President Biden in 2016 to help scuttle a Ukrainian government investigation of the company.”

President Joe Biden told the New York Post about the allegation, “It’s a bunch of malarkey.” However, Joe Biden discusses in a now-famous video that he refused to give billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine unless a certain government official was fired within six hours. Then Biden said that the man was fired.

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has other evidence. The committee “released evidence showing that payments from one of Hunter Biden’s business[es] went directly to Joe Biden. Before that, the House released information showing that the president’s brother James Biden made “loan repayments” of at least $240,000 linked to his brother’s business” with the payments being made prior to Joe Biden becoming president.

Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, said that the “payments from Hunter Biden were for a truck.” The payments from James Biden were for loans between brothers. How many people have $240,000 to loan to their brother?

Several House Republicans declined to speculate on any specific impeachment articles yet. They want to complete the inquiry before making any statements. However, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., who sits on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, suggested that there are several potential offenses to investigate.

“One, I think that it’s very evident from the documents that I’ve seen that this was at a minimum, a money laundering scheme,” Palmer told The Daily Signal. “It’s tax evasion. I think there’s potential that influence peddling was taking place. I think that going into an impeachment inquiry is the next step, the proper step, because I’m a firm believer in due process, and unlike what happened with President [Donald] Trump where it was all political and based on made up evidence, this has been fully documented.”

My opinion is that an investigation should take place. Congress should gather all the information and let the facts where they land. Truth can be covered up for a while, but it is eventually uncovered. Then, and only then, should a decision about impeachment be made.