House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was noncommittal about conducting a vote on articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden when he was asked about the possibility on March 13.
The speaker’s stance comes at a time when Republicans are continuing their investigation into the president and his business dealings, which has been going on for several months.
When Mr. Johnson was asked, during the House GOP conference in West Virginia, if he saw a way to have a vote to impeach President Biden this Congress, he responded without a firm response and told reporters that lawmakers needed to gather more evidence before deciding on a floor vote.
Mr. Johnson said that he has not yet performed a sufficient “deep dive” into the evidence acquired by House GOP investigators, due to his other speaker responsibilities.
However, the lawmaker didn’t hold back from recapping what the Republicans in the lower chamber of Congress have been able to ascertain in their investigation of the first family and potentially illegal business deals.
“We know that the Biden family has collected tens of millions of dollars from foreign adversaries, including China,” Mr. Johnson said.
“We know that President Biden lied and then it was proven later that he did have interaction with Hunter Biden’s business associates—he was not completely in the dark and didn’t know what was going on. We know all that is certainly true.
“We know that the brand that they were selling, according to Devin Archer’s testimony, was the [Biden] name and that Hunter was using and trafficking upon his father’s name.”
The lawmaker went on to assert there were “a lot of things that look very corrupt to the American people” that have come up in the investigation.
“And there’s a lot of things that we believe have violated the law.”
He added: “Does it reach the high crimes, treason [and] misdemeanors, standard? Everyone will have to make that evaluation when we pull all the evidence together and when we evaluate that.”
Additionally, the speaker asserted that in his view the White House appeared to be involved in an “unprecedented level of corruption” and that the president has likely been “complicit in trying to cover a lot of this up along the way.”
Mr. Johnson, who was involved in the impeachment against President Donald Trump, said House Republicans would not engage in the same tactics Democrats took part in during that investigation.
He said lawmakers “reached conclusions before they began their so-called investigations.”
“We’re doing the opposite, and that’s why it’s stuck on this desk,” Mr. Johnson said.
The Republican leader was asked a similar question at the March 14 press conference when he defended the pace of the impeachment inquiry, saying that it was part of a “methodical” process.
“The investigation has been slow and deliberate and methodical, as it must be [according to] the Constitution,” he said during a press conference at the House GOP retreat on March 14.
“I understand, and I think about this all the time—what a heavy power that is, that the House is given specifically in the Constitution, and how it needs to be very careful and deliberate.”
