(WASHINGTON) — After nearly two years of House Republicans vowing to investigate President Joe Biden and his family’s business dealings — while repeatedly falling short in substantiating their most significant claims — the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Ways and Means Committees on Monday released a nearly 300-page impeachment inquiry report filled with familiar allegations against the president, who has already announced he will not seek a second term.
The report, released on the first day of the Democratic National Convention and the morning of the day the president is slated to speak, rehashes many of the allegations Republicans previously made against President Biden while alleging that they have uncovered “impeachable conduct.”
However, the report does not recommend specific articles of impeachment; it instead says that the decision on the next steps will be left to the larger congressional body.
There appear to be no new bombshells in the report. The report details six so-called key findings alleging that the Biden family received $27 million from foreign entities using shell companies, $8 million in questionable loans, special treatment for Hunter Biden and White House obstruction of the impeachment inquiry into the president.
While the report is highly detailed and cites a wide array of documents and testimony, it provides few, if any, instances of Joe Biden himself being directly and knowingly involved in illegal or improper activities – mainly focusing on the actions of his son, Hunter Biden and his allies, and the president’s brother, Jim Biden.
The report appears to serve as a roadmap for House Republicans if they move to draft articles of impeachment for the House to then take up when Congress returns on Sept. 9.
It’s not clear yet what the next steps will be, including if articles of impeachment will even be drafted and formally introduced. If articles are introduced, one of the House committees — likely Judiciary led by Jim Jordan — would then hold a markup to pass the articles out of committee for House floor consideration. It’s not clear if Speaker Mike Johnson would hold an impeachment vote on the floor. Republicans have hesitated for months to move forward with impeaching Biden because they do not have enough votes to clear the measure, and many believe Biden’s actions do not merit impeachment.
Congress is only in session for three weeks in September and out on recess until after the November 2024 election. Notably, since Biden has dropped his reelection bid, House Republicans have already trained their sights on the new presumptive Democratic ticket, launching fresh investigations into both Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.
One of the key allegations in the report says that James Biden and Hunter Biden received a total of nearly $8 million in loans from entertainment attorney Kevin Morris, who represented Hunter Biden; family friend Joey Langston; and car dealer John Hynansky.
The vast majority of the alleged loans — more than $6 million of it — came from Morris, who allegedly paid more than $1.9 million of Hunter Biden’s tax liabilities, helped the president’s son buy a new house in Venice, California, and hire security. But, the report added, “Mr. Morris’s wealth allowed him to cover these tax debts and other debts for Hunter Biden without regard to expectation of repayment.”
The report suggests Morris’ financial assistance “creates the perception, at the very least, there was an unspoken quid pro quo or unlawful campaign contribution for which Mr. Morris would erase Hunter Biden’s IRS troubles—and by extension, help the Biden campaign rid itself of a serious liability—and receive some benefit in return.”
But the report does not provide any direct evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden himself in relation to this financial assistance.
Notably, multiple previous associates of Hunter Biden told the Oversight Committee over the course of the investigation that President Biden had no involvement with Hunter’s business dealings. Rob Walker, a longtime business associate of Hunter Biden, said in a closed-door interview in January that President Biden “was never involved” in Hunter Biden’s business dealings. “To be clear, President Biden — while in office or as a private citizen — was never involved in any of the business activities we pursued. Any statement to the contrary is simply false,” Walker said in his opening statement.
The report also claims the White House obstructed the Committees’ investigation into President Biden’s alleged retention of classified documents by preventing White House officials from testifying, erroneously asserting executive privilege and limiting access to materials from the National Archives.
Biden’s alleged retention of classified documents was independently investigated by Special Counsel Robert Hur, who recommended against charging Biden. While Hur says he found evidence that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified information,” he determined that charges were not warranted because “evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Hur’s decision to not recommend charges against Biden relied in part on his finding that Biden would come off as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” to a jury, a statement the president has slammed.
The report sharply criticized the White House for asserting executive privilege over the audio of Biden’s interview with Hur, arguing that the recording itself was necessary to understand Biden’s “mental state” and overall culpability. The DOJ defended its decision not to turn over the recordings by arguing the audio was “cumulative” and releasing them would harm “the evenhanded administration of justice” by preventing future cooperation from witnesses.
In June, House Republicans voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress over his failure to turn over the audio recordings, though the DOJ declined to prosecute Garland due to a longstanding policy against prosecuting an attorney general. A Republican-led effort to hold Garland in inherent contempt for his failure to turn over the audio tapes, which would have led to Garland being fined $10,000 per day until he complied with a congressional subpoena, failed in July.
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