House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) blasted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for threatening to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
“There is no basis to launch an impeachment inquiry or pursue impeachment toward President Biden or any members of his administration,” Mr. Jeffries told The Epoch Times on July 27.
“Democrats will strongly oppose any effort to launch an impeachment inquiry because there is no basis in law or in fact or in the Constitution to target the president or any member of his administration,” he continued.
This is the first time Mr. Jeffries has spoken out about the impeachment inquiry threat since Mr. McCarthy made it.
Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” on July 24, Mr. McCarthy talked about the FBI document alleging that Mr. Biden took payments from abroad while he was vice president through shell companies and that this information wouldn’t have been known from whistleblowers were the Republicans not in the majority in the House. Mr. McCarthy said that information rises “to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed.”
Mr. McCarthy went on to lament that Mr. Biden “has used something we have not seen since Richard Nixon: use the weaponization of government to benefit his family and deny Congress the ability to have the oversight.”
On July 25, Mr. McCarthy doubled down on his remarks.
“We have a president who told the American public in October that he’s never spoken to his family about [any] business,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “He said no one in the family had ever gotten money from China. Well, now that has proven not to be correct.
“We now have IRS whistleblowers come forward, saying that the Justice Department used their power differently than David Weiss or [Merrick] Garland has said to the American public and the Congress and Senate.”
Mr. Weiss is expected to testify before Congress this fall.
Mr. McCarthy noted that one of the two IRS whistleblowers who testified last week before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said the statute of limitations could have been extended on the most serious charges surrounding Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, when it comes to his taxes.
Hunter Biden was expected to plead guilty in Wilmington, Delaware, on federal tax and gun-related charges as part of a plea deal reached with federal prosecutors. However, the judge threw away the plea agreement and therefore Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty as a technical matter.
Mr. McCarthy also noted the allegation that President Biden took a bribe from abroad when he was vice president.
“The only way you can investigate that is through an impeachment inquiry so the committee would have the power to get all the documents that they need,” he said.
“When more of this continues to unravel, it rises to the level of impeachment inquiry where you would have the Congress to have the power to get to all these answers. I would think the Biden family would want to answer these questions as well, provide the documents instead of holding them back. Because we’re watching this administration use government and much like Richard Nixon used by denying us to get the information.”
Mr. McCarthy said the lack of transparency from the administration could trigger an impeachment inquiry.
“The actions that I’m seeing by this administration withholding the agencies from being able to work with us, that would rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry,” he said. “We still have a number of investigations going forward now.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be an impeachment inquiry, let alone an impeachment. As Mr. McCarthy said, it’s not an announcement.
“We are no different than where we were yesterday. We continue to gather more information,” he said.
“We’re finding more and more where the president, we now found, has lied to the American public when he said he never spoke to his son or his brother about the Biden businesses. They said that they never got, he said they never got one dime from China. We now know that that’s not true. We’ve had whistleblowers come forth and say the treatment is different than [the] rest of Americans.”
Mr. McCarthy went on to list other allegations, including the one about the statute of limitations related to investigating the younger Mr. Biden’s taxes.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), a Freedom Caucus member who has been critical of Mr. McCarthy, told reporters on July 25 that an impeachment inquiry of Mr. Joe Biden is warranted.
“I have to assume the speaker just recognizes there’s overwhelming increasing evidence that implicates the president,” Mr. Good said. “A reasonable person just could not conclude that he has been truthful, that he didn’t know about his son’s business dealings, that he wasn’t involved to some degree about his son’s business dealings.”
He noted the claims made by Tony Bobulinski, who worked with the president’s son and alleged before the 2020 election that Mr. Biden was in on his son’s business dealings.
Mr. Good noted that Mr. McCarthy’s words about impeachment matter.
“The speaker carries tremendous responsibility, of course, and his voice carries [a] tremendous amount of weight, so he should appropriately be a little more circumspect, a little more careful reflecting the entire 222 members of the Republican House,” he said. “But when he does speak to impeachment, it carries a tremendous amount of weight.”
