The GOP is Unserious About Joe Biden Impeachment – In 2019, the House Democrats impeached the forty-fifth president of the United States based on ambiguous charges that then-President Donald J. Trump engaged in an illegal quid pro quo with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Democrats based their impeachment of President Trump on the testimony of former White House National Security Council (NSC) member, Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman (ret.), who claimed that President Trump threatened to delay the shipment of congressionally appropriated lethal aid to Ukraine unless the Ukrainian president launched a corruption investigation into Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, for his allegedly illicit activities in Ukraine when he served on the board of Ukraine’s natural gas company, Burisma.
Trump managed to survive the impeachment against him.
But it was a divisive moment in the forty-fifth president’s divisive term in office (made so by the extremism of Trump’s rivals in the Democratic Party and within the so-called “Deep State”).
There was little evidence supporting Vindman’s claims.
Nevertheless, the Democrats, still smarting over the failure of their obsessive quest to prove that Trump had colluded with the Russians to tilt the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election in Trump’s favor, pursued Trump with great vigor.
There was not a damaging detail that the Democrats excluded from the public during the course of their divisive and wholly unnecessary impeachment of Trump. They were out for Trump. And the Left was going to do whatever it took to get what they wanted from Trump—including abuse their power to extract political concessions from the forty-fifth president.
House Republicans Investigate Hunter Biden
Today, the House Republicans sit in similar positions that the Democrats held in 2019, when they impeached Trump. Joe Biden is another controversial president, who engenders a great deal of animosity and resentment from his political rivals. Biden is also at the center of a grave, yearslong political scandal involving his wayward son, Hunter, and charges of illicit influence-peddling at the global level.
Unlike the Democratic Party’s case against Trump in 2019, the House Republicans have amassed a trove of evidence showing the perfidy of Hunter Biden. And with that information, they also have the forty-sixth president dead-to-rights.
The House GOP has more than enough evidence they need to, at the very least, initiate an impeachment inquiry into President Biden for allegations that he was a key participant in his son’s epic levels of corruption.
In fact, the Republicans through the course of an impeachment can likely prove that President Biden was the beating heart of his son’s allegedly illicit international influence-peddling operation.
If the shoe were on the other foot, the Democrats, as was proven throughout the Trump years, would not hesitate to initiate an impeachment of their rival in the White House—with far less evidence in hand.
But the House Republicans, despite their chest-beating in public about Hunter Biden, appear uninterested or fearful of going too hard against the Biden Syndicate.
Instead, they obviously want to simply fundraise off the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden and the mere illusion that they will, if Republican voters give them enough money and elect enough of them to power, ultimately get President Biden for his alleged corruption.
The longer the Republicans wait, though, the more time they potentially give to the Bidens to cover up any of their alleged crimes and the more chances they give the Democrats to successfully downplay the charges against them.
The more that the Republicans kvetch publicly about Hunter Biden’s alleged misdeeds, implying that President Biden was somehow involved, but fail to actually impeach Biden will only numb the public to the very real accusations against both Hunter and Joe Biden.
It will risk that the American people become tired of the story and conclude that the Republicans are merely reaching for straws on the Hunter Biden allegations.
A Tragic Double-Standard
The world has already witnessed the way in which the Biden Administration has successfully weaponized the Department of Justice (DOJ) to doggedly pursue their political rivals, such as former President Donald J. Trump, who has been indicted on a combined 91 counts related to the four major investigations into him (two of which are federal grand jury investigations).
The trials have all been perfectly timed with key moments in the 2024 presidential campaign cycle. Meanwhile, the federal government refuses to do anything other than treat President Biden and his family with proverbial kid’s gloves.
House Republicans have already heard the sworn testimony, for example, from two senior IRS whistleblowers alleging that the DOJ slow-walked and stymied their investigations into claims that Hunter Biden cheated on his taxes out of fear that the IRS would inevitably investigate Joe Biden’s personal finances.
The DOJ offered Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea deal in their case against him for tax evasion and illegal firearm possession—a deal that they would have never offered anyone else accused of similar crimes.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has proven itself to be a perennial thorn in the side of Donald Trump and his quest for reelection in 2024. After all, the National Archives accuses former President Trump of mishandling classified documents. They are the source of one of two DOJ prosecutions against Trump.
And the National Archives case is likely the most significant threat to Trump’s future.
That same National Archives, however, is sitting atop a whopping 5,000 emails from when Joe Biden was vice-president. Many of those emails in question have been subpoenaed by the House Republicans, as they have uncovered evidence that then-Vice-President Biden emailed his son using fake names and email addresses, coordinating his vice-presidential overseas trips with his son’s company, Rosemont-Seneca Partners.
The Republicans think that this indicates evidence of real collusion between Joe Biden and his son’s various international crimes. They need to see unredacted emails from the National Archives to prove this.
The same National Archives that is demanding the full-blown prosecution of a former president who is running for reelection for what amounts to a process crime is doing its utmost to protect their current boss, President Biden.
What’s Wrong with the House GOP?
House Republicans who are expecting the Executive Branch under Joe Biden’s command to follow constitutional guidelines and cooperate with them as freely as the anti-Trump Executive Branch did with the House Democrats during their investigations of Trump prove themselves to be utterly naïve.
The only move that will compel the federal government to respond to congressional demands will be for House Republicans to do that which they have been so afraid to do for years: actually resist the Democrats by using their congressional power against the Democrats.
If the House GOP is serious about impeaching Joe Biden—and they should be—they must begin an impeachment inquiry now. No more nibbling at the edges of this scandal and sprinkling the crumbs of innuendo to feed the Republican appetite for justice. It is now time for the Republicans in Congress to take a big bite out of crime.
Only a full-blown impeachment of Joe Biden can achieve this.
In this case, justice delayed is justice denied. And Republicans in the House are denying justice big-time the longer they wait to punish Joe Biden for his family’s alleged corruption.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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