by Mike Johnson at USA Today
Impeachment is among the most solemn constitutional authorities the U.S. Congress holds, particularly when it comes to a president.
As a constitutional lawyer and former member of the House Judiciary Committee, I have encouraged my colleagues to carefully consider the gravity of impeachment proceedings and the facts surrounding the current investigation into President Joe Biden’s conduct.
This week, the House will vote to take the next critical step by formalizing our impeachment inquiry into President Biden. The Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees will continue investigating the role of the president in promoting the alleged influence-peddling schemes of his family and associates, the orchestration of which reaped millions of dollars in payments from America’s foreign adversaries.
The committees also will further investigate statements made by the president concerning his knowledge and involvement in those schemes and the role his administration might have played in covering up alleged wrongdoing.
The House has a full plate of pressing issues, and we do not take this inquiry lightly. Our southern border is wide open, American families are struggling to make ends meet and a perception of American weakness has thrust the world into a state of chaos.
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Here are House Republicans’ accusations against Biden
Yet at this juncture, the evidence mounting against President Biden cannot be ignored, and the pushback from the White House and others must be addressed. Here are the accusations against the president:
- From 2014 to 2019, Biden family members and their affiliate companies received more than $15 million from foreign companies and foreign nationals in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania and China. Biden business associates received an additional $9 million.
- There are at least 22 examples of Joe Biden speaking with or meeting with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates.
- President Biden and the White House have lied multiple times about his involvement in his family’s business schemes.
- Last week, investigators released information showing payments to Joe Biden from Hunter Biden’s business account, which was funded by payments from China.
- Investigators also released an interim report detailing the special treatment Hunter Biden received from Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
- A credible FBI source relayed information about an alleged bribe Joe Biden accepted during his time as vice president.
These accusations refute the president’s repeated claims that he had no knowledge of his son’s foreign business dealings and that his son had “not made money” from China.
The White House has withheld thousands of pages of documents and emails from the National Archives, where then-Vice President Joe Biden was communicating under pseudonyms clearly designed to avoid public scrutiny. What is the president hiding?
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House Republicans will go to court if necessary
The House will likely need to go to court to enforce its subpoenas, and opening a formal inquiry – backed by a vote of the full body – puts us in the strongest legal position to gather the evidence and provide transparency to the American people.
I served on the impeachment defense team of former President Donald Trump on both occasions when House Democrats abused the process. Their efforts in 2019 employed the shortest proceedings, compiled the thinnest evidentiary record and used the narrowest grounds ever to impeach a president.
Many of the Democrats who voted to bring impeachment charges ran congressional campaigns with a premeditated plan to impeach Donald Trump. In doing so, they cheapened that solemn power and further eroded trust in our nation’s institutions.
House Republicans have taken the opposite approach. We will not prejudge this investigation; we will depose witnesses, gather evidence, establish a thorough record and present Articles of Impeachment only if the evidentiary record dictates such action.
We understand that to begin to rebuild Americans’ trust in the Congress, we owe it to the people to undertake this process methodically and transparently. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith have done exceptional work in that regard.
The American people have a right to know whether the president − through his family − traded official acts for foreign dollars, whether the president is compromised and whether Joe Biden abused his power as president to impede or obstruct the investigation into Hunter Biden. As we have done all along, House Republicans will continue to follow the facts where they lead.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., is speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
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