Does Joe Biden deserve to be impeached? The Republicans began their impeachment investigation against the American president on Thursday, September 28, motivated by his son’s controversial affairs abroad, but deemed completely unfounded by the Democrats.
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Conservatives, the majority in the House of Representatives since January, accuse the Democratic leader of having lied to the American people about the companies of his youngest son, Hunter Biden. For some more right-wing Republicans, Joe Biden’s past functions have made his task easier, explains our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin.
During the first parliamentary hearing devoted to this procedure, the head of the House investigative committee, James Comer, assured that he had “ found an overwhelming amount of evidence that President Biden abused his public office to financially benefit his family “. “ For years, President Biden lied to the American people about his knowledge and involvement in his family’s corrupt dealings “, declared the elected Republican from Kentucky.
12,000 pages of banking documents
The investigation was dismissed out of hand by the Democrats. “ If Republicans had any compelling evidence, they would be presenting it today “, mocked Jamie Raskin. “ The commission received 12 000 pages of banking documents. And not a single page shows that a single penny went to President Joe Biden. We received 2 000 pages of reports, we held hearings and had interviews with everyone, and despite that, we found no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. They have nothing on Joe Biden “, explains Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin.
The elected official accused his Republican colleagues of carrying out this investigation solely because of “ pressures » by Donald Trump, himself indicted twice by Congress, and who had called for this investigation against his successor. For one of the witnesses interviewed by the commission, a lawyer famous for his analyzes on the ultraconservative channel Fox News, “ an investigation yes, but grounds for dismissal, at this stage, no “.
Hunter Biden, a 53-year-old former businessman, has become a favorite target of the American right. Elected officials criticize him in particular for having done questionable deals in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017), capitalizing on his father’s name and networks. The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress can impeach the president for ” treason, corruption or other high crimes and misdemeanors “.
A headache for the White House
The 80-year-old president has always publicly supported his son, with a past strewn with addictions, also struggling with the justice system, accused illegal detention of firearm. “ I get up every day […] without focusing on impeachment. I have a job to do. I have to deal with the issues that affect the American people every day “, he declared in September.
If this investigation has almost no chance of success, it could turn into a headache for the White House before the 2024 presidential election, for which Joe Biden is a candidate. The procedure takes place in two stages. After carrying out its investigation, the House of Representatives votes, by a simple majority, on articles of indictment detailing the facts alleged against the president: this is what is called “impeachment” in English. At this stage, ” I don’t think the current evidence supports articles of impeachment “, said one of the witnesses at Thursday’s hearing, Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University.
If the indictment were to be voted on, however, the Senate, the upper house of Congress, would then put the president on trial. He would nevertheless very likely be acquitted, Joe Biden’s party being in the majority in this chamber.
The opening of impeachment proceedings has been demanded for months by the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, with which the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, had to make numerous compromises to gain access to the perch in January.
Never has a president been impeached in American history. Three were impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. But all were ultimately acquitted. Richard Nixon preferred to resign in 1974 to avoid certain impeachment by Congress due to Watergate scandal.
(And with AFP)
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