The House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden was sidelined during the 22-day scramble to elect a new speaker, but Republican lawmakers are moving forward – although many of them publicly questioned the evidence turned up so far.
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has urged GOP lawmakers to conduct a thorough and fair investigation, and he indicated to Republican moderates this week in a closed-door meeting that there was not yet sufficient evidence to initiate formal impeachment proceedings, sources who attended the gathering told the Washington Post.
“We’ll just go where the evidence goes and we’re not there yet,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who attended the Republican Governance Group’s weekly lunch on Tuesday. “Most of us are saying, look, we can’t even get a single Democratic vote on this right now. I think the voters will reject what they are seeing when it comes to Biden [policies] — but high crimes and misdemeanors? I don’t think we’ve seen that or enough data to really make a good case and I feel like [Johnson] really agreed with us on that.”
Johnson claimed over the summer on Fox News that Biden had used taxpayer resources to get Ukraine's top prosecutor fired to benefit his son's business dealings – a claim which has been debunked by U.S. and foreign officials – and said last week on the network that would be an impeachable offense, if proven.
But the speaker privately appeared to agree with Republicans who have argued that Biden's poll numbers are already weak, so there's less of a need politically to impeach him, according to Bacon and other attendees.
“Is it pragmatic? Does it make sense? Connecting those dots matter,” said Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR). “So I don’t think it makes sense to move down a road unless those dots can be connected, and I think that’s the message he was trying to send to us, which we appreciated.”
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) has issued subpoenas for Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president's son and brother, and requested voluntary closed-door interviews with other Biden family members and associates, but many Republicans are cautioning against a politicized and hasty impeachment like they say Democrats did to Donald Trump.
“We need to have an orderly and fair process about this,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA). “You have to go through due process on this and there’s a long ways to go before we start talking about and actually doing that. A lot more work needs to be done on James Comer and Jim Jordan’s committees — it’s got to be ironclad, and it’s got to be right before we start talking the ‘i’ word.”
Comer continues to probe the president and his family's foreign business dealings, while parallel inquiries led by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Ways and Means Committee Jason Smith (R-MO) are seeking evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors to be used against him, and the speaker appears to be satisfied with their work so far.
"[Johnson] has consistently praised the work of Chairmen Jordan, Comer and Smith whose investigations have already demonstrated that the President and White House have repeatedly lied about the Biden family’s business dealings with foreign adversaries," said Raj Shah, a spokesperson for the speaker. "He will support their efforts to follow the facts where they lead.”