After former President Donald Trump, it is the turn of his successor, Joe Biden, to face the first attempt by the US Congress to isolate him, at the instigation of Republican representatives, specifically the extreme right wing, who are considered Trump supporters. Although the attempt to isolate Biden in Congress will lead to nothing, according to experts and observers, this prompted Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who opposes Trump, and who had voted to isolate the former president twice, to say that “the ceiling set for starting impeachment procedures against presidents… Americans are declining more year after year,” while Democrats and Republicans have begun to use this weapon as a tool for political healing or electoral competition, the intensity of which has increased during the Trump era.
Trumpism contributed to fueling the tendency in Congress towards impeachment procedures for presidents, a wave that may increase in the coming years, while Trump had submitted to it, and today Biden, and immediately before them former Democratic President Bill Clinton, against the backdrop of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and before them only the late President Andrew Johnson in 1868, without convicting or impeaching any of the previous presidents mentioned. Biden’s accountability comes at a time when the political division in the United States is intensifying, and Trump is facing judicial charges, including those related to trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections, which may lead to his conviction and cast a shadow over his campaign to also run for a new presidential term. Trump accuses the Democrats, and Biden in particular, of arranging these issues for him so that he does not reach his party’s nomination for the presidency and compete with Biden.
Impeachment of the US President requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate
Today, Biden faces the same path, for the first time, after the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, announced the day before yesterday, Tuesday, that he had directed a House committee to open an investigation to hold the president accountable regarding his family’s business, in launching impeachment procedures, ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for… Fall 2024, for which Biden is running to win a second term.
McCarthy’s announcement came after increasing pressure on him from within the House, specifically from Republican representatives from the hard-line wing, such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, to take impeachment measures, with the House returning to session, the day before yesterday, at the beginning of the fall agenda. Knowing that he had repeatedly repeated before winning the position, succeeding Democrat Nancy Pelosi, after the midterm congressional elections in November 2022, that the House, in which the Republicans won a narrow majority after the midterm elections, would open an investigation with the aim of isolating Biden.
With this return, McCarthy plans to hold secret meetings with lawmakers several times during the current week, including a meeting to discuss Biden’s accountability. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is also struggling to pass the necessary legislation to avoid closing the federal government, which the extremist representatives in his party have threatened to obstruct if he does not announce the launch of impeachment procedures, in addition to threatening to request a withdrawal of confidence from McCarthy and cause him to lose his position.
The Presidency of the House of Representatives launched procedures to impeach Biden with the aim of isolating him, while Republicans in the House of Representatives have been investigating the business dealings of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, for about 9 months, without yet providing any conclusive evidence linking the US President to them. The Department of Justice also opened an investigation into Hunter Biden, who had pleaded guilty to tax evasion and possession of a firearm while he was addicted to drugs, which is part of the federal charges against him, while Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed, last August, an independent prosecutor, David. Weiss, to investigate Hunter Biden’s conduct.
Weiss, appointed by Trump, had mainly been investigating “allegations of criminal conduct” by Hunter Biden since 2019. Weiss’ appointment by the Department of Justice came after a deal between Hunter Biden and the judiciary regarding the prosecutions against him collapsed. In all of this, President Biden affirms his full support for his son, but he always asserts that he did not interfere in his son’s business, and has no relationship with it, especially during his tenure as (former) Vice President Barack Obama.
Impeaching Biden without evidence
Republicans do not have any evidence of Biden’s involvement in his son’s actions, but it is an issue that goes back to the years of Trump, who kept raising the issue, in response to the investigation that was opened against him, and the procedures for holding him accountable, on charges that his presidential campaign was involved in the issue of foreign (Russian) interference in the 2016 presidential elections, which he won. It has Trump. Republicans hope to kill two birds with one stone by launching impeachment, which is to provide more weight to the House of Representatives’ investigation into Hunter Biden’s actions, first, and second, to increase pressure on the president, who is preparing for difficult presidential elections next year, as he grows older, and his popularity continues to decline in opinion polls. . Republicans also hope that the impeachment proceedings will be the force that will enable them to access financial records of the Biden family, which the parliamentary investigation is struggling to access.
The day before yesterday, McCarthy said in a press statement: “I direct our committees in the House of Representatives to open a formal investigation to impeach President Joe Biden.” The Speaker of the US House of Representatives explained that “the investigation will allow lawmakers to collect evidence,” noting that Republicans “revealed serious and credible allegations about Biden’s behavior.” McCarthy said that the investigation will focus on whether President Biden has benefited from his son’s business dealings, among other things, noting that “these allegations relate to abuse of power and corruption, and require further investigation by the House of Representatives,” accusing Biden of fueling a “culture of corruption.” .
Democrats, for their part, as well as Republicans who reject the investigation, believe that the impeachment measures against Biden carry political goals, knowing that impeachment in Congress to isolate the president has always been a political tool for the rival party. The Constitution stipulates that the president be held accountable for committing “treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors,” a phrase about which constitutional experts did not agree much. Note that accountability of American presidents has remained rare throughout history, and President Richard Nixon was able to avoid it, after Congress launched procedures to impeach him against the backdrop of the “Watergate” scandal, for which he paid the price by resigning so that he would not be impeached. In fact, Nixon was the only US president actually threatened with impeachment, a procedure that requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and which failed in the cases of Clinton and Trump.
The day before yesterday, during the announcement, McCarthy spoke about reasons for initiating impeachment. The two ongoing investigations in the House of Representatives and the Department of Justice into Hunter Biden have not found any evidence related to it yet, and he said, “Through our investigations, we found that President Biden lied to the American people about… “His knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings.”
The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, who explained that the Parliamentary Oversight and Accountability Committee (headed by Republican James Comer) would lead the investigation, added that “eyewitnesses testified that the President joined in a number of phone calls, and had communications, dinners… that led to millions of dollars.” And the cars that his son obtained, and the millions that were pumped into the accounts of his son’s partners.”
McCarthy did not bring the impeachment issue to a House vote
McCarthy continued: “We know that the bank accounts showed that about $20 million were transferred to the accounts of members of the Biden family and their partners through fictitious companies,” pointing out that “the Department of Justice alone has more than 150 transfers that were classified as suspicious actions by American banks,” and pointed out that “Biden used his official office (under Obama) to coordinate with Hunter Biden and the latter’s associates regarding his work in Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.” He added, “Despite all of this, the Biden family appears to have received special treatment by the Biden administration,” referring to the Department of Justice, as Republicans accuse the Department of Justice of being lenient with the Hunter Biden case, and its intention to conclude a deal to acquit him and close his cases. It is noteworthy that Hunter Biden is expected to be charged by the end of this September with a federal crime of possession of a firearm. McCarthy concluded by saying: “We will go where the evidence takes us.”
Archer certificate
The White House and Democrats rejected these accusations. The White House said there was “no basis for an impeachment investigation.” His spokesman, Ian Sams, wrote on the social networking site “X” that “Republicans in the House of Representatives have been investigating for 9 months, and have found no evidence of any wrongdoing,” denouncing the “political motives” of the Republicans’ decision. He took aim at McCarthy, saying that he “pledged to hold a vote to begin the impeachment, but he backed out of that due to the lack of sufficient support for him,” referring to the Speaker’s retreat from raising the issue of impeachment for the purpose of impeachment to a vote of representatives before the impeachment procedures began. McCarthy had pledged to do so, but he backed down for fear that extremist representatives would withdraw confidence from him. Sams had previously seen McCarthy as “throwing red meat on the hardline wing,” by continuing to threaten to open an investigation.
Democrats see the attempt to impeach the president as an attempt to divert public attention from Trump’s legal problems. Democratic representatives denounced the move, saying it was a purely partisan exercise aimed at retaliation for the double impeachment attempt made by the House of Representatives against the former Republican president. Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said, “There is no evidence. Rather, all there is is just an order from Trump to begin impeachment procedures.” Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler stressed that there is “no basis for starting this alleged investigation,” considering that “the Speaker of the House may succeed in retaining his position for an additional day, but he has once again yielded to the most extremist elements in his party.”
But the Democratic president was undoubtedly aware that Republicans were preparing to pursue him over his son’s actions. CNBC reported yesterday that the White House began, last year, to form a defense team to refute Republican claims and confront their movements in Congress. The network believed that McCarthy’s decision not to take the accountability to a public vote means, at first glance, that the committee entrusted with the investigation will not be granted more exceptional powers than those granted to it by the Council’s laws.
In their investigation, the Republicans are relying on the testimony of Devon Archer, a businessman and former partner of Hunter Biden, who told the House investigation committee that over a 10-year period, Hunter Biden put his father on the phone more than 20 times while he was in meetings with his associates, and that Joe Biden He attended two dinners with Hunter and his partners, but he confirmed that Biden Sr. did not discuss during those sessions or calls any matters related to business, but rather pointed out that Hunter Biden tried to exploit his father’s position to suggest that he could reach him at any moment as part of his “brand.” .
Experts believe that the weapon of impeachment is a double-edged sword, as while the Republicans lost several seats and retreated in the 1998 midterm elections, after they filed the procedures for impeaching Clinton, the Democrats won the presidency in 2020, and Republican sympathy did not serve Trump.
(Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press)
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2023-09-13 23:00:03
