The White House has called for the end of the six-month-old impeachment investigation investigating President Joe Biden and his family, citing Republican investigators’ inability to find any evidence of the president’s wrongdoing.
In a scathing letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, White House Counsel Ed Siskel said it had become “clear” that the “House Republican impeachment is over,” citing reporting by ABC News, Punchbowl News, and Fox News in which members of the Republican majority admitted to reporters that the inquiry is “falling apart,” has found “nothing anywhere close to an impeachable offense,” and has failed to “identify a particular crime” that they can use to justify impeaching Mr. Bide.
The letter, obtained by The Independent, also mentions Colorado Republican Ken Buck, who stated that his decision to resign from the House effective next week is due in part to his colleagues’ decision to “[take] impeachment and [make] it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept.”.
It also notes that Mr. Buck’s opinion is “in line with conclusions” from a veritable who’s who of legal scholars from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum who have opined that there is currently “no constitutionally sound basis” for launching impeachment proceedings against the president. Former US District Judge Fern Smith is among these renowned individuals, describing the present impeachment process as “a misuse of power” and “manifestly unjustified.”.
“The House Majority ought to work with the President on our economy, national security, and other important priorities on behalf of the American people, not continue to waste time on political stunts like this,” Mr. Siskel wrote in the letter.
Mr. Siskel’s four-page letter to the House speaker is a vehement condemnation of what White House officials have described as a meandering, aimless investigation that ran its course long before surfacing evidence that proved the opposite of Republicans’ claims that Mr. Biden had committed wrongdoing.
The White House counsel pointed out that the two Republican committee chairs overseeing the investigation—HHouse Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan—hhave admitted that the probe’s true purpose is to politically harm Mr. Biden and “frame up” this year’s presidential race to bolster the campaign of former President Trump.
“For over a year, House Republicans have been investigating President Biden in an effort to find something—anything—to hurt the President politically. Instead, the investigation has continually turned up evidence that, in fact, the President did nothing wrong,” he told reporters.
Mr. Siskel’s letter comes less than a month after federal authorities arrested former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on accusations of fabricating bribery allegations against Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, an attorney and former lobbyist.
Hunter Biden said in a transcribed interview with committee members and staff last month that his father had no involvement in any of his various business interests, despite Republican claims to the contrary. Republicans have spent years alleging that he and the president engaged in various influence-peddling schemes, with no evidence to back up the claims.
In addition, the president’s brother, James Biden, told committee investigators that the president “never had any involvement” in his business interests. The president’s former financial manager also testified that he was “not aware of any financial transactions or compensation that Vice President Biden received related to business conducted by any of his family members or their associates, nor any involvement by him in their businesses.”.
Hunter Biden’s business associates all stated the same thing to Republican-led committees, claiming that Mr. Biden was never involved in any of his son’s business operations.
Mr. Siskel noted that more than 20 witnesses called before the committee have “all but confirmed” the president’s lack of involvement in Hunter Biden’s work, calling the collective evidence given by the witnesses a “mountain of testimony” that, supported by a “voluminous set of records” produced for the investigation, “has only laid bare that the President did nothing wrong.”.
He also noted that several witnesses that Republican lawmakers had cited as having damning information against the president turned out to be criminals. Mr. Smirnov has been charged with lying to the FBI about the bribery claims, and another former committee informant, Gal Luft, is currently a fugitive on charges of selling armaments to Iran and acting as an unregistered agent for China. Meanwhile, Republicans intend to bring two convicted felons as witnesses in a public hearing scheduled for next week.
“Instead of admitting the truth that the President did nothing wrong, the Majority is wasting even more time on abusive steps like trying to re-interview witnesses who have already testified—perhaps hoping the facts will be different the second time around,” the letter read, calling the GOP’s gambit “the latest abusive tactic” in a probe that has “targeted the President’s children, grandchildren, siblings, and in-laws for no reason” and “intruded into private citizens’ lives.”
“That is enough. It is clearly time to move on, Mr. Speaker. “This impeachment is over,” he stated. “There is too much important work to be done for the American people to continue wasting time on this charade.”.
The White House’s plea for a stop to the probe comes as the House’s investigative efforts appear to be stalling, despite Mr. Comer, the Oversight Committee chair, continuing plans for a public hearing, including Hunter Biden’s acquaintances.
Raj Shah, Mr. Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, said it was “not surprising that the White House would prefer to close the ongoing House inquiry” in a statement released in response to Mr. Siskel’s letter, which repeated claims about Mr. Biden’s family receiving $20 million from “foreign sources.”
“The White House does not get to decide how impeachment gets resolved; that is for Congress to decide,” he said.
