A vote of the full House to approve the inquiry would shore up its legitimacy. But there is no prospect of actually impeaching and removing the president.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) is reportedly pushing his thin Republican majority toward a vote that would, for the first time, give formal House approval to the ongoing investigation that has been labeled an “impeachment inquiry” targeting President Biden.
As we’ve previously noted (see, e.g., here, here, and here), in September, then-speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) unilaterally declared the ongoing investigation to be an impeachment inquiry. This was problematic: (a) There is a significant question about whether the speaker has such authority; (b) McCarthy himself had objected vehemently in 2019 when then-speaker Nancy Pelosi unilaterally authorized an impeachment inquiry (the Ukraine impeachment) against then-president Donald Trump (though McCarthy reasoned, in connection with the Biden inquiry, that his objection notwithstanding, Pelosi’s action had become a precedent supporting his action); and (c) the Trump Justice Department took the position that the impeachment inquiry was illegitimate because it was not supported by a vote of the full House.
It is worth adding: A few weeks into the Ukraine impeachment probe, Pelosi did have the House vote to approve the inquiry. Ultimately, when the Democratic-controlled House, in a strict party-line vote, approved impeachment articles against Trump, it added an obstruction article based on the Trump administration’s impeding of the probe. This illustrates a point I’ve made many times, since impeachment, alas, has become a quotidian feature of our politics: The process is political, not legal; whatever you may think the legal “requirements” are for inquiries and impeachable offenses, if a majority of the House votes to approve an impeachment action, it is authorized.
If an impeachment inquiry is going to proceed, it is a good thing for the House to vote for it as a body. The Constitution gives the House, not the speaker, plenary power over impeachment. A vote by the House thus shores up the inquiry’s authority to compel evidence. In impeachment, unlike other legislative proceedings, the House is analogous to a grand jury — i.e., it can legitimately probe whether high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed in the absence of the usually required “legislative purpose” in support of a congressional investigation.
In theory, then, if the House votes to approve the inquiry, it will be harder for Biden administration agencies to refuse to comply with congressional information demands. Note that I said “harder,” not “impossible.” Again, this is a political process. Biden knows (a) that it is unlikely the House will be able to generate the support needed to approve articles of impeachment and (b) that he would never be convicted, removed, and disqualified by the Senate, which is controlled (albeit narrowly) by Democrats, and in which a two-thirds’ supermajority vote is required for conviction. (That’s why no American president has ever been convicted in an impeachment trial.) Consequently, the Biden administration will be unconcerned if congressional Republicans accuse it of obstructing the inquiry; Biden’s only concern would be if the public — with Election Day only eleven months away — is angered by administration intransigence.
Even assuming Johnson can get the inquiry approved — having lost another voting member when Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) was expelled last week — the impeachment probe still faces significant obstacles. Here are the main ones:
- Many Republicans will point out that there is little point in pressing for impeachment when the Constitution’s two-thirds’ Senate super-majority mandate for conviction renders removal of Biden inconceivable. In normal times, when impeachment was considered a last-resort congressional response to egregious executive misconduct, the practical impossibility of conviction in the Senate would be reason enough for the House to resist impeachment proceedings. But now, with impeachment having been converted into a partisan weapon (a development for which Democrats blame Clinton-era Republicans, and Republicans blame Trump-era Democrats), that is no longer the norm. But the lack of prospect for success should still weigh heavily.
- Along those lines, there are about 18 Republican House members from districts won by Biden in 2020. Their reluctance to vote for a mere impeachment inquiry was the main reason McCarthy refrained from holding a vote. Johnson may have gotten enough of them to come around that he can now win an inquiry vote. That, however, hardly means these members would vote to approve articles of impeachment.
- Even if Biden could be impeached and removed, the result would be President Kamala Harris, an outcome neither party wants (for different reasons, of course).
- Impeachment is extraordinarily time-consuming, requiring Congress to shut down other business (especially during a Senate trial, over which the chief justice would have to preside, complicating the Supreme Court’s capacity to conduct business). With the war in Europe, war in the Middle East, Iranian proxies firing on American forces, China menacing our forces and allies as it eyes Taiwan, a border-security crisis, and Americans battered by high prices, can we really afford to shut down other government operations in order to conduct an impeachment proceeding that has no chance of actually impeaching and removing the president — particularly when, if voters want Biden removed, they will have an opportunity to do that themselves in November?
- Unfortunately, Democrats have so far succeeded in convincing much of the public that the Biden family influence-peddling scandal, even if disturbing, is not that big a deal because there is sparse evidence that Joe Biden personally profited. As I’ve repeatedly observed, this is the wrong way of looking at the scheme. Joe Biden is the business. The scheme to have agents of corrupt and anti-American regimes pour millions of dollars into Biden family coffers ($24 million between 2014 and 2019, according to House investigators) could not possibly have succeeded without Joe Biden’s willingness to have his political influence monetized. Without his cooperation, the scheme would have shut down in five minutes. Moreover, as a technical legal matter (as well as a political and ethical matter), it should be irrelevant whether Biden personally got a nickel. For example, the IRS considers it income to X if X participates in an arrangement in which people compensate X by paying money to X’s son (or another close family member). These countries were not paying for the dubious business acumen of Hunter and Jim Biden, they were paying for access and the appearance of access to Joe Biden — which would serve to intimidate investigators and competitors. That’s the scheme. Nevertheless, much of the public has been persuaded that this was “Hunter’s business,” in which Joe had little meaningful involvement.
- If the Biden family business is to be enough to impeach Biden over, the missing element is not whether the president personally profited. The significant national-security issue is what did these corrupt and anti-American regimes believe they were getting by paying for access to Biden? But this question seems absent from public discourse. There has, for example, been a great deal of discussion about Biden’s accommodationist policy toward China. I’ve seen a ton of commentary about why the policy is wrongheaded. But there’s nary a word about whether the accommodationist policy is explained, at least in part, by the fact that Chinese agents have paid the Bidens millions of dollars. Needless to say, if a Republican were president and had accepted exorbitant sums from America’s most challenging geopolitical rival, the only thing we’d be hearing about is the direct line between the president’s weak policies and his being a bought-and-paid-for agent of the Chinese Communist Party.
- President Biden’s most serious dereliction of duty involves the collapse of border security — which is so bad that, in addition to the catastrophe at the southern border, it has become a northern-border problem. Yet, weirdly, the Republican impeachment inquiry appears unconnected to the president’s failure to protect the United States from an invasion by millions of illegal aliens — more than the size of every major American city except New York; so many that it is breaking the economies and welfare systems of our cities and states, which now face the start of winter uncertain of how they will shelter tens of thousands of people who were enticed to come to this country illegally because Biden convinced them that they’d be admitted and permitted to stay. Border security is a 75–25 issue favoring Republicans — increasingly so now that big-city Democrats, who are living with the wages of Biden’s policies, are turning on him. If an impeachment inquiry is worth having, border security should be front and center. But it’s not — at least it hasn’t been.
The strongest supporters of the impeachment inquiry are pro-Trump Republicans. Because the impeachment initiative has no chance of ultimate success, it is difficult to see it as anything other than the politics of this unprecedentedly strange election cycle: With the Biden Justice Department and elected progressive Democrats engaged in lawfare against Trump (including four indictments and various civil lawsuits), Trump’s allies want to counter with an investigation, under the auspices of impeachment (i.e., bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors), that spotlights Biden’s sleaziness.
If Republicans are determined to go ahead with this, it is appropriate to have an accountable vote of the full House. That would be a marked improvement, but it would not obviate the initiative’s many other problems.