Joe Biden Impeachment Problems Republicans May Have Missed

There are a number of issues that House Republicans will have to contend with as the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden progresses.

The GOP has been investigating the president over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden's business dealings with China and Ukraine while the elder Biden was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden's lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP's impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.

The formal inquiry will encourage the White House to cooperate, Republicans have said, as it will give committees more power to subpoena documents and testimony.

Hunter Biden's Tax Probe

Hunter Biden has been indicted on tax charges alleging he schemed to evade at least $1.4 million in federal taxes between 2016-19.

The nine-count indictment filed last week lists three felonies and six misdemeanors, including failure to file and pay taxes, false tax returns, and evasion of assessment. He is accused of spending money on prostitution, online pornography, and luxury cars, in addition to $10,000 on a sex club membership. Hunter Biden faces a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison if convicted.

James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, is leading the inquiry into Biden and his staff might ask Hunter Biden about the charges in a deposition. But Hunter Biden would have the Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer any questions that could touch on his pending criminal charges, which may affect the inquiry's ability to source information.

America's Not Yet Sold on Impeachment

While the House is sold on an inquiry, and October polling for CNN showed 61 percent of Americans think the president was involved in his son's business dealings, more people than not disapprove of holding an impeachment inquiry into the president. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said Biden shouldn't be impeached and removed from office.

Meanwhile, a Marist College poll released in October showed only 33 percent approval of an inquiry into Biden, while 39 percent disapproved.

In contrast, most people supported both impeachment inquiries Donald Trump faced, and CNN polls at the time showed moves for him to be impeached, attracting between 10 and 14 points more support than calls for Biden's impeachment.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Biden and the GOP via email for comment.

They Have To Do It in Public

According to House of Representative rules, impeachment hearings are generally public but can be closed if a committee agrees in a public majority vote. Hearings may be closed when "the evidence or testimony would endanger national security, compromise sensitive law enforcement information, or would tend to 'defame, degrade, or incriminate the witness.'"

Hunter Biden has said he will only participate in public depositions, with his lawyer saying the president's son does not trust the committee to represent closed-door proceedings accurately to the public and media.

Comer has only released 2 of the 16 closed-door depositions to the public.

An Explicit Criminal Act?

In December 2019, Trump was charged by the then-Democratic-led House of Representatives with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for allegedly attempting to coerce Ukrainian officials to provide election interference against Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The Senate later acquitted Trump.

Constitutional annotations and legal analysis by the Library of Congress and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) about the impeachment described why he was acquitted. It said that "The House's managers' failure to allege an explicit criminal act appears, along with criticism of the House investigation and failure of the House to prove its case, to have been among the primary reasons given for acquittal."

This implies Republicans will have to find evidence of "an explicit criminal act" for an impeachment of Biden to hold.

Maneuvering a 180

While they support an inquiry into Biden now, in 2019, Republicans spoke out against impeachment inquiries, with now-House Speaker Mike Johnson calling them "bitterly divisive" as Democrats prepared to impeach Trump.

Newsweek reached out to Johnson via email for comment.

Johnson told reporters there: "The Founding Fathers, the founders of this country, warned against single-party impeachments. And they had a very specific reason for warning us against that.

"They said that it would be bitterly divisive, perhaps irreparably divisive for the country, and that's what's happened now. This is the first time in the history of this nation in 243 years that a president has been treated in this manner when one party has followed and pursued a predetermined political outcome to get to that end.

Republicans may now see similar accusations waged against them, with commentators pointing out that Johnson's words could be used against him.