The reality that President Biden will not be impeached and removed does not mean Democrats will not mount a defense of him — he is, after all, their candidate in the next election. One of the issues they will be raising (it’s already come up in Republican questioning of constitutional-law professor Jonathan Turley, one of today’s witnesses) is when conduct that Republicans portray as impeachable occurred.
It is an issue because the influence-peddling scheme that is the crux of the impeachment inquiry, as Republicans have designed it, took place prior to 2019. There is a legal theory that impeachment is meant as a check on presidential abuses of power, and therefore that “high crimes and misdemeanors” are impeachable only if committed while the president in question is in power.
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