Republicans anticipate unearthing more information about Biden family profiteering in the House’s new impeachment inquiry—and even one of the chamber’s more reluctant members agrees.
Among the most vocally restrained Republicans on the question of impeaching President Joe Biden has been Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo.
Buck, however, voiced support Wednesday for the impeachment inquiry authorized this week by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., which will be conducted by three committees that already were looking into the Biden family: Oversight and Accountability; Judiciary; and Ways and Means.
“It was a good move by the speaker to focus on the investigation,” Buck, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told The Daily Signal. “The committees will do the work now to get to the point of determining whether there is a case to impeach.”
Buck, former chief of the criminal division of the Colorado U.S. attorney’s office, also was elected district attorney in Weld County, Colorado.
“Where it belongs is with the [House] committees,” Buck said. “We will continue to do what we’ve been doing.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, also a former federal prosecutor and a former first assistant attorney general of his state, also will be part of the investigation of the president.
“We are not talking about articles of impeachment at this point. We are talking about an inquiry,” Roy told The Daily Signal.
After House investigators found that foreign individuals and entities paid $20 million to his family members while Biden was vice president, Roy said, the discovery raised potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“We are obviously looking into all manner of corruption that we are seeing, whether it’s Foreign Agents Registration [Act], whether it’s the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” Roy said. “If I were a prosecutor, I would tell you all the elements of these crimes.”
House Republicans met Thursday about the impeachment inquiry, according to news reports.
In announcing the impeachment inquiry Tuesday, McCarthy said the process will allow Congress to use the full weight of its oversight authority.
Typically, congressional oversight requires a legislative rationale. Impeachment, however, allows Congress to investigate potential wrongdoing.
“The bottom line is we’ve got to look into these and see where the facts lead,” said Roy, who, like Buck, is a member of the Judiciary Committee. “Again, we haven’t even scratched the surface yet in terms of diving in and investigating where the dollars flowed and looking at bank accounts and so forth of the Biden family. I think that’s something the Biden family wants to avoid.”
The Biden administration has stalled the House’s investigation, said Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., a former state prosecutor in his state.
“For months, House Republicans have uncovered an unprecedented amount of evidence that reveals Joe Biden’s knowledge and involvement in his family’s influence peddling schemes while he was vice president,” Cline told The Daily Signal.
Cline continued:
Even still, the administration continues to stonewall our ongoing investigations and slow-walk producing more of this evidence, preventing the American people from finding out if the sitting president abused his position of power to enrich himself or his family.
I look forward to joining my colleagues in opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, and we will follow the facts where they lead to ensure he is held accountable, and Americans know the truth in its entirety.
Much of the evidence came from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings in China, Ukraine, Romania, and other countries.
The oversight committee has found that at least nine members of the Biden family have received millions of dollars in payments from foreign sources.
In July, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, released an FD-1023 form from the FBI showing that a confidential informant told the bureau that an executive with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, paid a $5 million bribe to Biden while he was Barack Obama’s vice president to affect U.S. policy to benefit Burisma.
Biden made his first comments Wednesday about the House’s impeachment inquiry.
“Well, I tell you what, I don’t know quite why, but they just knew they wanted to impeach me,” Biden told reporters, before referring to the Sept. 30 deadline to pass a spending bill to keep the government operating at current levels.
“And now, the best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down the government,” the president said.
“So look, look, I got a job to do,” Biden added. “Everybody always asked about impeachment. I get up every day, not a joke, not focused on impeachment. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got to deal with the issues that affect the American people every single, solitary day.”
Ian Sams, a senior adviser to the White House counsel’s office who has been its spokesman on oversight issues, scolded news executives in a memo sent Wednesday to suggest that media outlets scrutinize Republicans.
“Covering impeachment as a process story—Republicans say X, but the White House says Y—is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote to the news executives.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee responded to the Sams memo Wednesday by saying the White House is “threatening the media.”
“The White House refuses to answer questions about President Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling schemes and what the Bidens sold to make millions,” the committee said. “That’s because witness testimony reveals Joe Biden was ‘The Brand,’ and he was used to send signals of access, influence, and power that enriched the Biden family. When faced with defending the indefensible, the White House is now threatening the media to stop reporting on it. What are they trying to hide?”
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