A Donald Trump jury trial could coincide with a Joe Biden impeachment trial. Talk about a split screen.
Not only that, but the increasingly likely articles of impeachment against Biden for bribery and extortion would be the most serious charge–if not yet provable–than any other in history. Certainly, more than the two times Trump was impeached.
When House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., first said during an interview with Sean Hannity that mounting evidence about Biden’s conduct is “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry,” it seemed deliberate and not part of the banter.
After Hannity almost seemed to not notice the gravity of the words from the speaker–who sought to suppress an impeachment push for months–an unprompted McCarthy repeated the phrase “impeachment inquiry.”
The next day, the speaker briefed reporters at the Capitol about an impeachment inquiry, most of whom did notice the comments more than Hannity. He noted, “What an impeachment inquiry does, when you vote on the floor, is it gives you the apex of power of Congress.”
McCarthy’s surprising comments came days after Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley’s office released the FBI’s FD-1023 form in which a confidential FBI informant reports that executives from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings paid a $5 million bribe to then-Vice President Joe Biden and a separate $5 million payment to Hunter Biden to leverage the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the firm–and to assist expansion of business activities into the United States. The form also claims the Bidens pressured the Burisma head to make the payoff.
Impeachment used to be something only a fringe or most partisan House Republicans supported, not mainstream members and certainly not the leadership. That is clearly changing.
A Joe Biden impeachment might be inevitable.
This week, Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer gave stinging testimony to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that Joe Biden participated with more than 20 gatherings with Hunter Biden’s international business partners either in person or by speakerphone.
House investigators have already built a case that $10 million have poured into various Biden family LLCs that provided no actual goods or service. This all buttresses the potential point about bribery, since the FD-1023 form quotes Burisma executives claiming it will take 10 years to figure out how the payments were made going through a maze of shell corporations.
Further, Hunter Biden complained in a text message about spending half of his salary paying his father’s bills while he was president. This would also seem to connect Hunter’s business directly to tied to Joe.
We’ve gotten used to House impeachments having little drama since we know that the Senate will NEVER have a two-thirds supermajority to convict and remove from office. Can we really be certain about it this time?
It’s massive smoke, but not a smoking gun. Still, the House Oversight Committee gathered an extensive circumstantial case for a propoderance of evidence in a relatively short span of time.
But we do know Biden lied–repeatedly in fact–about the extent to which he knew about his son’s business deals.
It also seems unlikely that Kevin McCarthy would stick his neck out like this unless he was perhaps aware of something we don’t yet know.
Joe Biden Should Worry
The ultimate point is, what if there is a smoking gun around the corner? Given the surprising momentum in only six months of investigation, it’s not unthinkable. It could become politically untenable for Democrats to circle the wagons, similar to how Republicans eventually abandoned Richard Nixon.
This isn’t a shady phone call like Trump’s first very weak impeachment. Trump’s second impeachment over the Capitol riot was credible enough to gain bipartisan support, but it still was in the realm of a “high crime or misdemeanor.” This isn’t lying about an affair with an intern like Bill Clinton’s impeachment. This most certainly isn’t the violation of an unconstitutional Tenure of Office Act, as was the case in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
This is a credible allegation of bribery.
What’s different here from those other impeachments is that Biden’s alleged crimes happened when he was vice president–before he was president. The alleged offenses of all other impeached presidents happened while they served.
The other big difference is gravity of the charge. The Constitution states that impeachment can happen under “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Those past presidential impeachments were all for alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors.” There has never been a potential impeachment for bribery–until now.
The bribery allegation may not be true. But it should be investigated as thoroughly as possible–including the alleged existence of audio tapes in the FBI form. It might take an impeachment inquiry to do that.
Impeachment–a designated constitutional process–could give Congress more legal leverage to compel either document production or testimony than a simple congressional subpoena should there be executive vs. legislature litigation showdown when investigating Biden family influence peddling.
At a time when some polls have shown more than two-thirds of Democratic voters already don’t want Biden to run, if evidence keeps mounting, is a two-thirds Senate majority really that implausible?
Barbara Joanna Lucas is a writer and researcher in Northern Virginia. She has been a healthcare professional, political blogger, is a proud dog mom, and news junkie.
From 19FortyFive
The Second American Civil War Has Begun
