The House Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry, based in part on the many accusations against the president’s son Hunter Biden. But one FBI agent is disputing several of the assertions at the heart of the impeachment push.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he has directed House committees to begin the process of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. He did not move for a vote to authorize such an inquiry, nor is it clear that McCarthy has the votes to impeach the former president, especially when a deal must be reached in the next three weeks to avoid a government shutdown. There’s also the matter that the case against the president is incredibly weak, and the House Republicans have nothing resembling a smoking gun establishing wrongdoing by the president.
On the day McCarthy announced the inquiry, the Washington Post reported that an FBI agent was challenging some of the assertions at the heart of the impeachment push.
According to the newspaper Thomas Sobocinski, who led the team at the FBI that is investigating Hunter Biden, is disputing the notion that the investigation was “stymied” by the Justice Department.
While Sobocinski acknowledged that charging decisions about Hunter Biden were made slowly, he challenged the notion that U.S. Attorney-turned-Special Counsel David Weiss had told investigators that he lacked authority to file certain criminal charges.
At issue is the October 2022 meeting in which Gary Shapley, a whistleblower, has said he was told that Weiss said he didn’t have authority for specific charges. But Sobocinski claims that he did not hear Weiss say that.
“I never thought that anybody was there above David Weiss to say no,” he said in an interview with the House committee, obtained by the Post.
“I wanted to make sure that if my team felt that there was any difference in — if they view this differently, then that becomes an operational matter for me to want to get — getting resolution,” Sobocinski told the committee. He also said to them that he and others at the FBI feared for their safety.
“I now have FBI employees whose, names are out there,” he told the committee, per the Post. “I have FBI employees and former FBI retired agents who’ve served for 20-plus years whose parents are getting phone calls, whose photos with their girlfriends, who their children, who are being followed. That is not something that we were prepared for, and I was concerned about having that continue or expand to other one of my employees.”
Also in the Washington Post, columnist Philip Bump this week assessed that, and other allegations made in the impeachment inquiry. While Bump acknowledged that the president has not been entirely forthright about his level of interactions with his son’s business associates, these are more a matter of semantics.
While McCarthy stated that the president “joined on multiple phone calls and had multiple interactions, dinners” with Hunter’s business associates, Bump notes that one of them, Devon Archer, was evident in testimony that he has never seen the president and Hunter “discussing the substance of Hunter Biden’s business.”
Also, McCarthy pointed out the money that was meant to go to “Biden family members,” without noting that they have no proof that any of that money went to President Biden himself.
And Bump notes that McCarthy’s claim that “a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family” is “flatly untrue.”
“The informant was trusted but made no allegation. The allegation came from someone with dubious credibility and has not been bolstered by any additional evidence,” the columnist wrote.
“After eight months in the majority in the House, though, Republican investigators have not been able to substantiate most of the allegations above, much less prove them,” Bump wrote. “McCarthy’s willingness to overstate the scale, extent and importance of what his allies have uncovered would seem to bode poorly for the reliability and credibility of the impeachment inquiry he has now approved.”
Author Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
