With President Joe Biden preparing to deliver the keynote address for the Democratic National Convention on Monday night, Republicans in the House of Representatives released a report accusing him of "impeachable conduct" and demanding that he be removed from office.
The 291-page report from the Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees largely repeats accusations raised in previous reports and committee hearings: that Biden, as president and vice president, committed abuses of power and obstructed efforts by Congress to investigate those abuses.
In a statement issued Monday morning, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, who, along with Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, has been the public face of the impeachment inquiry, confirmed that the timing of the report was no accident.
"As Democrats celebrate Joe Biden and crown [Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee] Kamala Harris as his heir apparent this week, Americans should remember the reality of the Biden-Harris administration: crime, chaos, and corruption," Jordan said in a statement.
Sharon Yang, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, responding to a VOA request for comment, said in an email: “After wasting nearly two years and millions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans have finally given up on their wild goose chase.”
“The American people deserve more from House Republicans, and perhaps now they will finally join President Biden in focusing on the real issues that American families actually care about," she said.
Experts on the impeachment process described the case gathered by the three committees as thin and lacking evidence of the kind of damaging misbehavior that has driven such inquiries in the past.
"It's performative foolishness that would be comical if it were not such a terrible misuse of a serious constitutional power," said Frank O. Bowman III, professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri and the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump.
The case against Biden
Republicans in Congress have been investigating the financial dealings of Biden and members of his family for years. Much of their focus has been on his son, Hunter Biden, and the president's brother, James Biden, who took in millions of dollars from foreign business dealings while Joe Biden served as vice president from 2009 to 2017.
On multiple occasions, the investigation found that Joe Biden met or spoke with clients of his son and brother. In most cases, those meetings appear to have been brief interactions at dinners and events or phone calls in which Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone in the presence of a client, presumably to demonstrate his own level of access to his father.
Hunter and James Biden, as well as associates of theirs who gave testimony to the committee, have said that matters of actual business were not discussed in the presence of Joe Biden. The committees offered no actual evidence of Joe Biden using or offering to use his authority to benefit clients of his son or his brother.
Nevertheless, the Republican-backed report said that Biden's actions related to his family members' business clients constitute an "abuse of power" for which he should be impeached.
Obstruction allegation
In addition, the report charges that Biden's resistance to certain requests from the investigators constitutes obstruction of justice, another impeachable offense.
Among other things, the investigators object to the fact that Biden did not order the Justice Department to release the audio recording of an interview he conducted with special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating the presence of classified documents at Biden's private residence and material he stored at the University of Pennsylvania.
The transcript of Biden's interview with Hur was provided to investigators. Hur ultimately decided that charges against Biden were not warranted.
Experts unimpressed
Michael Gerhardt, a professor of constitutional law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of the 2024 book, The Law of Presidential Impeachment: A Guide for the Engaged Citizen, told VOA that the evidence gathered by the investigation does not point to the kind of conduct that has triggered previous impeachments.
Gerhardt, who has been called by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to testify on the topic of impeachment, said that presidential impeachments have involved "serious abuses of power [where] the only recourse, or the primary recourse … was impeachment."
"We have not had many presidential impeachments, so we're talking about an awfully small set, but typically, we're looking for some kind of serious misconduct that hurts the republic or hurts the Constitution," he said. "And I don't think we have either of those things here in this case."
Not an impeachable offense
There is little argument about the evidence that members of Biden's family, Hunter Biden in particular, have for years used the family name to make money.
Bowman, however, said that family members' business practices, however unsavory, are not the proper evidence on which to base an impeachment.
"It is not an impeachable offense to have family members who are trying to make a buck off your name, and Republicans have never been able to find any occasion on which Joe Biden — who is, after all, the impeachable officer here — has ever either taken any governmental action, offered to take any governmental action, or even implied that he would take any governmental action to benefit his son or his brother, or to benefit people who are doing business with his son or his brother."
Future unclear
It is far from certain that there is enough Republican support in the House to approve articles of impeachment. The GOP has a slim margin of control in the House and would need the support of nearly every one of its members to pass the articles of impeachment. Recent media reports have found that dozens of Republican representatives are reluctant to vote in favor.
In a statement Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said, "We encourage all Americans to read this report." He gave no indication, however, that he intended to bring an impeachment vote to the floor of the House.
