Biden impeachment probe opens – the evidence so far

As House Republicans begin their formal impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden on Thursday, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer says they already have “overwhelming” proof that he abused his office for his family’s financial gain.

The White House vehemently disagrees. The Biden impeachment is “based on lies,” many of which have been “actively disproven,” according to a memo emailed to news organizations earlier this month.

What two years of GOP investigations have indeed produced is clear documentation that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, used his famous last name as leverage in trying to land foreign business deals, according to publicly released House committee interview transcripts and documents.

What the probes have not yet turned up is any solid proof that President Biden personally profited from those deals, or that he used his powers as an elected official to bend policy to the benefit of his son’s employers, despite some circumstantial hints to the contrary.

That sets the GOP inquiry apart from previous presidential impeachments, which began with more credible evidence of wrongdoing, say some experts. This process may look less like the Nixon, Clinton, or Trump impeachments and more like the Republican House investigations into the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, says Frank O. Bowman, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Missouri.

The Benghazi probes spiraled in a different direction after investigators discovered that Secretary Clinton had been using an unsecured home server to handle government emails, some containing classified information. FBI investigations of Mrs. Clinton’s emails likely damaged her 2016 presidential campaign.

Republican leaders may be hoping that with the Biden impeachment inquiry, like Benghazi, “somewhere along the way something will pop up,” says Professor Bowman, author of  “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump.”

The Biden brand

The central focus of the House impeachment inquiry is Hunter Biden and his lucrative foreign business connections, and how – or whether – his father was connected to them.

“Bank records show that nearly $20 million in payments were directed to ... Biden family members and associates through various shell companies,” Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said earlier this month.

But so far, “Biden family” in this context remains a stretch. Records produced by House committees prior to the opening of the impeachment inquiry show that the vast majority of that money went to Hunter Biden and his business associates.

None yet shows that any went to Joe Biden himself.

What House Republicans do have is testimony that the son used his father’s name and the implication of access to the highest levels of the U.S. government to attract clients and foreign deals. Devon Archer, a Hunter Biden associate interviewed by House investigators, said that Hunter marketed the Biden “brand” to prospective partners.

The younger Biden talked to his father on the phone every day, said Mr. Archer, especially after his older brother, Beau Biden, died in 2015. Mr. Archer testified that he saw Hunter put his father on speakerphone, or reference his father being on the line, some 20 times during business meetings.

The elder Mr. Biden, who was vice president at the time, also appeared at two dinners hosted by his son, said Mr. Archer. He went around the table and shook hands with people, most of whom he seemed to be meeting for the first time. At no time did he talk in anything other than generalities, according to Mr. Archer’s testimony. 

Vice President Biden appeared to be glad-handing like a normal politician, said Hunter’s business partner. Asked if the son was selling the “illusion” of access to the father, Mr. Archer responded, “Yes.”

The Burisma allegation

In 2014, Hunter Biden was named a board director of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, owned at the time by a man the U.S. government considered to be corrupt. Then-Vice President Biden was the point person for the Obama administration on Ukraine policy.

The younger Mr. Biden’s appointment made some U.S. officials uncomfortable, reportedly including Vice President Biden himself. “I hope you know what you are doing,” Hunter recalled being told by his father, in a 2019 story in The New Yorker.

Republicans have long alleged that Vice President Biden helped Burisma at his son’s urging. In particular, former President Donald Trump and others insist that the United States pushed out Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, by threatening to withhold loan guarantees in 2016 in order to stop Mr. Shokin’s investigations into Burisma. 

Critics say this charge has long been debunked. The U.S., its allies in the region, and the International Monetary Fund all wanted Mr. Shokin fired and coordinated their efforts to accomplish the task. They believed he slowed corruption investigations of Ukrainian elites and even interfered with prosecutions. A State Department memo prepared for a 2015 Biden trip to Ukraine wrote that getting rid of Mr. Shokin was key to anti-corruption efforts, as he is “widely regarded as an obstacle to fighting corruption, if not a source of the problem.”

House Republicans have also pointed to an FBI document as evidence Vice President Biden may have received a $5 million bribe from Burisma.

The 1023 Form, used to record interviews with informants, cites an FBI source as saying he had heard Burisma’s CEO say he had made two $5 million payments to “the Bidens.”

The Burisma official did not give any further information or full names, according to the informant – who also said that he had no idea whether the boast was true, according to the FBI document.

China shakedown?

Other items House investigators point to as possible evidence of President Biden’s involvement in his son’s deals include WhatsApp texts from 2017 in which Hunter Biden threatened a Chinese businessperson over payment holdups.

In one of the messages, which were provided to the GOP by an IRS whistleblower who had been investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes, Hunter told his Chinese contact, “I am sitting here with my father we would like to understand why the commitment has not been filled.” 

If the answer was not forthcoming, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction,” Hunter Biden wrote.

Hunter has denied that his father was actually in the room during that conversation, and said that it was a period of his life when he was in the grip of addiction. At the time, Joe Biden was a private citizen. He angrily said “no” when asked by a reporter whether he was in the room.

The elder Mr. Biden has, however, made some misleading public statements about his son’s foreign connections.

Responding to a question at the second presidential debate on Oct. 22, 2020, Mr. Biden claimed his son had made no money in China. But in court testimony this summer, Hunter Biden said he had indeed made substantial sums from Chinese deals – his first public confirmation of that fact.

On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released two bank wires obtained by subpoena that allegedly reveal Hunter Biden received payments originating in China that list President Joe Biden’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address.

Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, told CBS News that the bank transfers were the result of a loan from a private individual – and they referenced his father’s address because that was the one listed on Hunter’s driver license.

Impeachment becoming more common

To House Republicans, all this created the need for an impeachment inquiry, even if it has not yet directly implicated the president.

House investigations to this point “paint a culture of corruption” around the Biden family, said Speaker McCarthy when he directed the House to open impeachment proceedings on Sept. 12 without ordering a full chamber vote.

Yet this impeachment effort opens under different circumstances from previous ones, say some experts. President Richard Nixon had faced years of Watergate investigations and the public release of the White House tapes before resigning under an impeachment threat. President Bill Clinton had been investigated for years by independent counsel Ken Starr. President Trump was on-transcript asking the president of Ukraine to open an investigation into Hunter Biden as a favor to him, and was impeached a second time after congressional investigation of his actions in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Biden impeachment inquiry, meanwhile, opens with far less factual foundation, says Professor Bowman. Whatever Hunter Biden did, he is not the president.

“It really does devalue the institution,” Professor Bowman says.

The scope of the inquiry is also different, in that it focuses on events that occurred years before Mr. Biden became president.

When the Constitutional Convention created an impeachment process, members thought it would primarily be applied to acts that were happening at the time, and that were so egregious judgment could not wait until the next election, says Keith Whittington, a political science professor at Princeton University who has written widely on impeachment powers. 

The Founding Fathers knew impeachment might arouse political passions, but they did not foresee how partisan the process might become. Due to party polarization, voters are dug into their positions. Many members of Congress have safe seats and worry more about their next primary than about general elections.

Under those conditions, impeachment may become a more usual, if still pointed, political tool.

“We are probably in a political dynamic right now where incentives are fairly strong to impeach presidents,” says Professor Whittington.