White House calls on Republicans to end the impeachment inquiry into Biden
The White House urged Republicans in the House of Representatives on Friday to end their efforts to impeach President Biden, declaring that “enough is enough” after their months-long investigation failed to deliver promised evidence of high crimes and crimes.
“It is clearly time to move on, Mr. Chairman,” White House counsel Edward N. Siskel wrote in a four-page letter to Speaker Mike Johnson. “This impeachment is over. There is too much important work to be done for the American people to continue wasting time on this charade.”
The letter comes as the Republican impeachment proceedings have all but collapsed following the indictment of a key witness on charges of fabricating allegations against Hunter Biden, the president’s son. A number of Republicans have questioned this venture, and even some impeachment advocates have now concluded that they would not be able to muster a majority if they sent articles to the floor indicting Mr. Biden.
The White House is hoping to take advantage of the Republicans’ disarray, essentially calling their bluff and daring them to put up or shut up, although it is unlikely that the hardliners at the Republican conference will vote for either will choose both options. Biden’s team holds little hope that Republicans will formally call off the investigation, let alone acknowledge that they don’t have much to show for it, but the president’s advisers want to put a punctuation mark on the Republican setbacks and make it clear to the public that Impeachment is effectively dead.
It’s part of a new aggressive strategy by the president as he begins his reelection campaign in earnest, starting with his confrontational State of the Union address last week and his active travel schedule in battleground states since then. After a period when allies feared Mr. Biden was too passive, he hopes to be back on the offensive as he heads into a rematch with former President Donald J. Trump, whom he defeated in 2020.
Republicans in the House of Representatives aren’t quite ready to give up yet. They claim they are still investigating and have scheduled a hearing next week with Hunter Biden’s former business associates. They also demand recordings of special counsel Robert K. Hur’s investigation, which investigated Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents even though they were not among the subjects of the impeachment inquiry and Mr. Hur decided no criminal charges were warranted used to be.
But recognizing that an impeachment vote is unlikely at this point, Republicans have explored an alternative strategy by issuing criminal referrals, urging the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Biden or the people around him. Such a move would have no legal weight and would essentially be little more than a symbolic statement, unless Mr. Trump wins and uses the references to justify a prosecution of Mr. Biden after he leaves office.
In his letter on Friday, Mr. Siskel addressed the majority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives over its problems with impeachment. He quoted Republicans themselves as saying they “cannot identify a particular crime” allegedly committed by the president, and lamented that they had made impeachment “a social media issue rather than a constitutional concept.”
“The House Majority should work with the President on our economy, national security and other important priorities on behalf of the American people, and not continue to waste time on these types of political stunts,” the House wrote. Mr Siskel.
Rather than finding evidence that the president committed criminal acts, he added, “the investigation has consistently uncovered evidence that the president has, in fact, done nothing wrong.” He listed 20 witnesses whose testimony he said undermined the Republican theory that money paid to Hunter Biden by foreign companies amounted to bribery. He noted that “the majority cannot identify any policy or governance decisions that were allegedly inappropriately influenced.”
Mr. Siskel criticized Republicans for trying to re-interview witnesses who had already testified, “perhaps in the hope that the facts will be different the second time,” which he called “just the latest abuse tactic in this investigation.” Republican efforts to seize Hur’s investigation, he added, amounted to seeking “a flotation device for the sinking impeachment effort.”
The Republican investigation began shortly after the party took control of the House of Representatives early last year and was approved as an official impeachment inquiry in September by Kevin McCarthy, then the speaker of the House of Representatives. The full House voted in December to formalize the investigation on a strict party-line vote.
However, the impeachment effort suffered a major blow last month when Alexander Smirnov, a witness relied on by Republicans, was accused of fabricating claims that Mr Biden and his son had each solicited $5 million in bribes from a Ukrainian company. Mr. Smirnov told investigators that “officials linked to Russian intelligence were involved in relaying a story” about Hunter Biden.
“No evidence has shown that the President did anything wrong,” Mr. Siskel wrote. “In fact, it has shown the opposite of what House Republicans are saying.”