On September 12, 2023, Kevin McCarthy, then-speaker of the United States House of Representatives, announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The inquiry was conducted by the House's Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees. James Comer, chairman of the Oversight Committee, was named to lead the investigation.
Speaker McCarthy had twelve days earlier said an inquiry would require a majority House vote. He initiated the inquiry stating that recent House investigations "paint a picture of corruption" by Biden and his family. No congressional investigations had yet discovered any evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden himself. The inquiry held a public hearing on September 28, 2023.
Despite neither the earlier Comer committee investigation nor the impeachment inquiry finding evidence of wrongdoing by the president, on December 13, 2023, majority House Republicans unanimously approved a resolution to formalize the inquiry. Democrats unanimously voted against the resolution. Lacking evidence and Republican appetite to proceed to impeachment hearings with their thin House majority, by March 2024 the impeachment inquiry was winding down. The three investigating committees released a nearly 300-page report on August 19, 2024, alleging "impeachable conduct" but did not recommend specific articles of impeachment, focusing primarily on the activities of the president's son Hunter and his associates, and the president's brother, James Biden.
On February 15, 2024, the FBI arrested and charged Alexander Smirnov, who was the central figure in bribery allegations against Biden, for lying to investigators and fabricating an uncorroborated story to damage Biden's reelection campaign, and that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved" in manufacturing the story. In December 2024, Smirnov pled guilty.
Background
Since 2020, Republicans have advocated for investigations into the business dealings of Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who they alleged engaged in corrupt activities including influence-peddling, and shared money with his father. They have sought to directly connect Hunter's financial affairs to Joe, and demonstrate that Joe benefited from Hunter's business dealings. A specific allegation that Joe sought to protect Hunter from a corruption investigation by arranging to have the Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin fired has been repeatedly shown to be false. They have also accused the Department of Justice of interfering in a federal investigation into Hunter, which has been ongoing since 2018, to give him preferential treatment. Congressional Republicans have launched multiple committee investigations to look into these allegations, including the House Oversight Committee investigation into the Biden family. By the time of the impeachment inquiry, these investigations had not produced evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Over the course of the committee investigations, McCarthy alleged that the Biden administration engaged in "obstruction", although Oversight Committee chair James Comer said on Fox Business in June 2023, that for every subpoena he had issued during his investigation, "we've gotten 100 percent of what we requested, whether it's with the FBI or with banks or with Treasury."
Former president Donald Trump, as well as some Republican members of the House of Representatives and Senate, have expressed a desire to retaliate against the impeachments of Trump by beginning an impeachment inquiry of Biden. Following Joe Biden's inauguration, various Republican members of Congress have engaged in several efforts to impeach him. The first of these efforts occurred when articles of impeachment citing the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory were filed by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene one day after Biden's inauguration. In the 118th Congress, Republicans were able to hold a majority in the House of Representatives, comprising several members of the Freedom Caucus. Kevin McCarthy, leader of the House Republican Conference, was elected speaker of the House after several days and many votes as opposition—primarily led by members of the Freedom Caucus—mounted against him; as part of negotiations, McCarthy conceded to his opponents and faced pressure from Republican members to either impeach Biden or launch an impeachment inquiry against him. The Fiscal Responsibility Act, an act drafted to resolve the 2023 United States debt-ceiling crisis, weakened McCarthy's standing with members of the Freedom Caucus who opposed his negotiations with Biden.
In June 2023, the House of Representatives voted to begin an investigation into Biden's removal and referred two impeachment articles written by Lauren Boebert to committee. McCarthy privately told his members that he would consider impeachment if the Oversight Committee investigation produced sufficient evidence. Trump has privately and publicly encouraged impeaching Biden. On Truth Social, he lambasted Democrats for impeaching him amid the Trump–Ukraine scandal. Leading up to the inquiry, Trump met with House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik and Greene, discussing impeaching Biden both times.
Initiation of the inquiry
In an early September interview with Breitbart News, Kevin McCarthy promised that he would only open an impeachment inquiry into Biden with a full House vote. On September 12, 2023, McCarthy directed three House committees—the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan, the Oversight Committee, chaired by Comer, and the Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Jason Smith—to hold a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. McCarthy did not hold a floor vote on the impeachment inquiry and he did not appear to have sufficient Republican support to pass a floor vote. The chairmen of all three committees had been involved in preceding investigations into the Biden family. McCarthy asked Comer to lead the inquiry. When announcing the inquiry, McCarthy said that earlier findings of House investigations "paint a picture of corruption" involving Biden and his relatives, particularly regarding the business dealings of Hunter.
McCarthy alleged that Joe Biden used his official office as vice president to coordinate with Hunter's business contacts and noted that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter's business dealings. He also brought up allegations that Joe Biden benefitted from Hunter's foreign business dealings. McCarthy argued that the Oversight Committee investigation demonstrated and warranted further investigation by the House of Representatives and that an impeachment inquiry would allow for a stronger investigation. McCarthy concluded the allegations by saying that Biden's family was given "special treatment" by the Biden administration despite these "serious allegations."
According to McCarthy, the impeachment inquiry would give House Republicans "the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public". Traditionally, congressional committees are given more sweeping authority to issue and enforce subpoenas when done so as part of an impeachment inquiry. McCarthy has drawn parallels between the Biden and Nixon administrations, accusing the Biden administration of using "government much like Richard Nixon by denying us to get the information that we need".
Despite claiming that he would hold a vote, McCarthy opened the inquiry independently. McCarthy has defended this reversal, saying that then-speaker Nancy Pelosi "changed the precedent" in launching an impeachment inquiry into Trump in 2019, when Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry a month before a floor vote was eventually held to approve it. During the 2019 impeachment inquiry against Trump, McCarthy had asserted that he believed that an authorizing vote must be held in order for there to be a legitimate impeachment inquiry.
On December 13, 2023, the House of Representatives voted 221–212 to formalize the inquiry. Lawmakers voted along party lines to back a resolution that Republicans say will give them more power to gather evidence and enforce legal demands. The investigation, which began in January 2023 and was recently formalized, has yet to provide evidence Biden committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.
House committee investigations The House Oversight Committee plans to focus on the Biden family and their finances, the House Judiciary Committee on alleged coverups, and the House Ways and Means Committee on tax sensitive information.
Comer said that House Oversight investigators would seek additional emails dating back to the Obama administration and witness testimony from people alleging misconduct by the Biden family. The Oversight Committee also plans to pursue bank records for Hunter and James Biden, Joe Biden's brother. The Oversight Committee's ranking member, Jamie Raskin, who was lead manager during Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, has referred to the GOP investigation as a "complete and total bust." The House Oversight Committee officially held its first hearing on September 28.
Jordan said that the House Judiciary Committee planned to subpoena lawyers in the Justice Department's tax division who worked on the Weiss special counsel investigation into Hunter, headed by United States Attorney David Weiss. The ranking member, Jerrold Nadler, called the impeachment inquiry "absurd," and said that it was "poisoning our vital oversight work."
The Comer committee issued a subpoena for Hunter's bank records on September 25, finding he received two wire transfers from Chinese nationals in summer 2019 that listed his father's Delaware home as the beneficiary address. Comer said, "Joe Biden's abuse of public office for his family's financial gain threatens our national security. What did the Bidens do with this money from Beijing?" Hunter's attorney Abbe Lowell asserted the wires were loans from a Chinese company in which Biden had invested in 2017, and he used his equity in the investment as security for the loans. Lowell said the money went into "his new bank account which listed the address on his driver's license, his parents' address, because it was his only permanent address at the time."
Smith held a press conference on September 27 to discuss allegations of Biden influence peddling and a two-tiered justice system. Smith alleged that Hunter sent a WhatsApp message in June 2017, telling a business associate that he said he was not willing to "sign over my family's brand." Smith said it was clear that Hunter was referring to "Vice President Joe Biden's political power and influence." Joe's term as vice president had ended months earlier, but Smith said Biden was a presidential candidate at that time; Joe announced his candidacy in April 2019. Smith also discussed an email from a Weiss deputy telling investigators to remove all references to Joe Biden as "political figure one" from a search warrant for Hunter. When a reporter mentioned the email was sent in August 2020, when Trump was president, Smith suggested that was inconsequential to the underlying allegation of a two-tiered justice system. When pressed on the timelines of his comments, Smith said he was "not an expert on the timeline" but would like the Bidens to "tell us about all the timelines."