In the same boat: After Donald Trump, President Biden also faces ‘impeachment’
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: His predecessor Donald Trump faced two impeachments during his term (2017-21) and is still embroiled in various court cases. Now, US President Joe Biden, 80, is also facing an impeachment inquiry on his allegedly ‘lying’ about his son Hunter’s controversial business deals over a decade ago in China and Ukraine.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy bowed to intense pressure from his party’s hard right and authorized the launch of an impeachment investigation against Biden on Tuesday, the media reported.
The White House on Wednesday rejected “baseless” allegations of wrongdoing against President Biden after Republican lawmakers launched an impeachment inquiry against him.
While America’s current leader remained silent when reporters asked him about the probe, President Biden’s spokeswoman pushed back against the investigation by his political foes.
“They have spent all year investigating the President… and have turned up with no evidence, none, that he did anything wrong,” Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told newspersons.
“That’s because President Biden didn’t do anything wrong.”
Republican House members have been accusing President Biden, a Democrat, of “lying” to the American people about his son Hunter’s controversial business dealings abroad.
But Jean-Pierre said Republicans did not even have enough support for a vote in the House to approve an impeachment probe.
“Even House Republicans have said the evidence does not exist,” she said. “This is a political stunt.”
The probe comes as President Biden faces low poll ratings ahead of a likely rematch with his predecessor Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election.
President Biden ignored impeachment questions from reporters at the White House while leading a meeting of his “Cancer Cabinet” which aims to eradicate the disease, part of a recent effort by the administration to put the focus back on his domestic agenda.
For the President, cancer is a personal issue as his eldest son Beau died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. Joe Biden also had a cancerous skin lesion removed in February while doctors removed two from First Lady Jill Biden a month before in 2023.
Biden has stood resolutely by his sole surviving son, Hunter, 53.
The younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father was Vice President under then-President Barack Obama (2009-17) have been a constant target of Republicans.
Hunter Biden, a recovering drug addict, is currently under investigation by a Justice Department special counsel for possible tax evasion and is expected to be charged by the end of this month with a firearms violation.
However, he has not been charged with crimes related to his foreign business dealings, and no credible evidence has emerged so far that his father, the President, was involved in anything illegal.
But the probe threatens to distract the White House and give Republicans fresh ammunition for attacks ahead of the November 2024 election.
According to a new national poll by Quinnipiac University, Biden holds a slim one-percent lead over Trump — 47 percent to 46 — in a hypothetical match-up.
Half of voters thought Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business dealings with China and Ukraine, while 35 percent thought the President did something illegal, the poll found.
