On the menu today: Sure, everything surrounding Hunter Biden and his suspicious foreign business partners and frequent phone calls to his father is shady as hell. Republican control of the House of Representatives has enabled the Committee on Oversight and Accountability to regularly reveal new revelations and nuggets of information that paint a particularly ugly portrait of the Bidens, in which Hunter is constantly meeting with wealthy foreign elites and massive amounts of money are going into the Biden family accounts through an elaborate network of limited-liability companies, and everyone involved insists it isn’t bribery or influence-peddling. And a CNN poll indicates that despite Democrats’ confident assertions, a majority of Americans believe President Biden had some involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and that the president has responded “inappropriately” to the criminal investigation of his son.
So why would Republicans louse all this up by turning it into a formal impeachment inquiry?
A Drip-Drip-Drip Would Hurt Biden More Than Another Doomed Impeachment Effort
House Republicans had — and arguably still have — a good thing going in their ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden, or as they put it, the “Biden Family Investigation“:
- They have revealed, “Biden family members and business associates created a web of over 20 companies — most limited liability companies — formed during Joe Biden’s vice presidency.”
- They have revealed, “The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals’ companies. Chinese nationals and companies with significant ties to Chinese intelligence and the Chinese Communist Party hid the source of the funds by layering domestic limited liability companies.”
- They have revealed, “IRS Whistleblowers who were part of the Hunter Biden Investigatory team explained how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying [sic] them from taking needed steps in their investigation, divulging key information about the investigation to Hunter Biden’s attorneys, and denying approval to bring charges — multiple times.”
Devon Archer told the House Oversight Committee that his former business partner, Hunter Biden, was selling the “illusion” of access to Joe Biden. If you can get the vice president and future president on the phone, that is access, not the “illusion of access.” No smoke and mirrors were involved, nor was a ventriloquist. What is now indisputable is that Hunter Biden was selling access to his father; if you doubt that, call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 and ask to speak to Joe Biden. My guess is that they will not patch you through to the Oval Office immediately.
During this time period, Hunter Biden, in his own words, was “smoking crack every 15 minutes.” He had no practical experience with Ukrainian oil or natural-gas markets, or with Romanian real estate, or electricity distribution in Hong Kong, or managing Chinese investment funds, or a Kazakhstani oligarch’s interest in developing energy resources for the Chinese state-owned energy company, or the investment and construction company of Russia’s richest woman. And yet each one of those entities hired Hunter Biden, at a lucrative fee, for vague or unspecified services.
The Committee’s work has also proven that Joe Biden’s previous pledge, “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses, period,” was at least misleading, if not a blatant lie. The position of the Bidens is that Joe Biden got on the phone with Hunter Biden’s business partners more than 20 times, but business was never discussed in any of those conversations.
Add it all up, and at minimum, Joe Biden was unwittingly playing along with his son’s efforts to convince foreign businessmen that by paying Hunter Biden’s enormous fees, they could purchase a friend in the top level of the U.S. government. No, we haven’t found smoking-gun evidence of a change in U.S. policy driven directly, explicitly, and only because of a payment to the vice president-turned-president’s son . . . yet.
But if the vice president’s son is gallivanting around the world, telling shady foreign businessmen that he can put them on the phone with his father in exchange for a large sum of money, that is still a significant problem for the U.S.; remember that during this time period, Vice President Biden was traveling to countries such as Romania and Ukraine and speaking to their parliaments, denouncing the sins of bribery and corruption. Meanwhile, the Biden family collectively was being paid more than $1 million from Romanian real-estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu. The Biden family was ultimately paid about $6.5 million from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company under investigation for corruption.
In David Ignatius’s recent eye-opening column calling upon Biden (and Harris!) not to run for reelection, the longtime Washington Post columnist declared, “Biden has never been good at saying ‘no. . . .’ He should have stopped his son Hunter from joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company and representing companies in China — and he certainly should have resisted Hunter’s attempts to impress clients by getting Dad on the phone.”
And despite Democrats’ assertions that no one cares about Hunter Biden, a majority of the American public sees something troubling in the president’s relationship to his son’s past business deals. The most recent CNN poll found that 61 percent of Americans believe President Biden had some involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Of those respondents, 69 percent believe Biden’s involvement was illegal, and 29 percent believe it was unethical but not illegal. Just 1 percent said they believe it was not wrong at all. Overall, just 44 percent believe President Biden has acted “appropriately” regarding the investigation into Hunter Biden, while 55 percent believe the president has acted “inappropriately.”
The question is, does it make sense for the Republican-led House of Representatives to pursue the impeachment of President Biden, based upon what it has found so far?
I’d argue no, not really. I think a steady drip-drip-drip of new evidence and more contradictions of President Biden’s blanket denial are more harmful to his chances of winning a second term. If there was a chance this was going to end with Biden’s removal from office, I would feel differently. But we all know that the overwhelming majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, if not all of them, will vote against impeachment and conviction. And we also know that if push came to shove, and there was an actual chance of Biden’s removal from office, many Republicans would likely hesitate before taking an action that ensured Kamala Harris became the 47th president.
As the editorial board of National Review put it Tuesday:
One immediate issue is the matter of votes. McCarthy bypassed a floor vote on opening an inquiry, deciding instead to direct the relevant committees (Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means) to pursue this inquiry. This indicates that he did not have enough support among Republicans to get the requisite votes to open the inquiry. Now that he has taken this step, if Republicans don’t end up having the votes to pursue actual articles of impeachment, it will be touted by Biden as a full exoneration.
Once you make this impeachment process official, sooner or later, the House will have to vote on articles of impeachment. It can’t go on forever; the House will have to vote on whether to impeach the president before Election Day 2024.
Start with the reasonable assumption that not even one of the 212 House Democrats will vote to impeach. There are 222 Republicans right now, along with an imminent vacancy in the GOP-leaning second district in Utah. Assuming there are 223 House Republicans when the impeachment vote occurs, at least 218 Republicans would need to vote affirmatively to impeach Biden.
There are 18 House Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020. Maybe by the time the vote occurs, the evidence against Biden will be overwhelming and even most independents and Democrats will support Biden’s impeachment, but that doesn’t feel like a safe bet.
This effort to impeach Biden risks the razor-thin GOP House majority, in exchange for what would likely be a speedy trial and majority vote not to convict in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Right now, Democrats are in a tough spot, effectively arguing, “Yes, all of this looks shady as hell, but the president did nothing wrong. This is all just a story of a father who loves his son, and coincidentally, the entire Biden family just stumbled into millions of dollars from seedy foreign businessmen. Nothing to see here. Everything’s on the up and up. All is well. Remain calm.”
Now that the impeachment inquiry has begun, Democrats have an easier argument: “As bad as this looks, it doesn’t rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor. The American people will have their opportunity to decide Joe Biden’s fate in November 2024. It’s best to let them decide how serious this is, and what the appropriate consequences are.”
ADDENDUM: You probably don’t need me to remind you that inflation, which many Democrats wanted to believe was conquered and resolved, is still bad. The real question is, is it better (and funnier) to say that prices are higher than “the average Coloradan” (yesterday’s initial headline, which may have eluded people’s funny bone) or higher than “the Chinese spy balloon”?
If only our military could shoot down high prices. . . .