House holds first hearing in Biden impeachment inquiry

Witnesses are sworn in before the House Oversight Committee impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. From left are, Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School, Eileen O'Connor, former Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, Bruce Dubinsky, with Dubinsky Consulting, and Michael Gerhardt, Burton, Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.

Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.

None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.

Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.

At the close of the hearing, House Oversight Chair James Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden. The subpoenas will be for their personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

Here are some key takeaways from Thursday’s hearing:

GOP witnesses say not enough evidence yet to impeach Biden: While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.

Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

Witness testimony frustrates some Republicans: Some inside the GOP are expressing frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.

GOP maps out questions they want to answer: House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas. Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

Democrats attack inquiry for lacking evidence on the president: Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president. “The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.

Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.” Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. 

Read more takeaways from the debate.

CNN’s Melanie Zanona and Avery Lotz contributed reporting to this post.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer speaks during the House Oversight Committee impeachment inquiry hearing into President Joe Biden, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

At the close of the impeaching inquiry hearing Thursday, House Oversight Chair James Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.

The subpoenas will be for their personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

Comer had been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. The move shows where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.

Republican Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the money went to the “associates” — Hunter Biden’s business partners — not even Biden’s family itself.

So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)

A Republican aide for the House Oversight Committee disputed the Post’s analysis on Thursday, saying that bank records obtained by the committee actually show that, of $24 million in payments between 2014 and 2019, $15 million went to the Bidens and $9 million went to associates. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment; the committee has not publicly released the underlying bank records that would definitively show the breakdown in payments.

The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.

Rep. Katie Porter holds up a poster board with a quote from Rep. Kevin McCarthy saying that an impeachment inquiry without a vote authorizing it would "create a process completely devoid of any merit or legitimacy." 

Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat from California, needled what she said was hypocrisy by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, highlighting his past comments about whether a vote was needed to begin an impeachment inquiry.

During Thursday’s hearing, she held up a poster board with a quote saying that an impeachment inquiry without a vote authorizing it would “create a process completely devoid of any merit or legitimacy.”

After asking the witnesses to guess who said it, Porter said it was McCarthy, revealing his face on the blown-up poster.

The McCarthy remarks were from 2019, when Democrats were pursuing Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors. 

Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.” 

According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim. 

Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a House Oversight Committee impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, on Thursday in Washington, DC.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, blasted House Republicans at Thursday’s impeachment hearing, calling their antics “an embarrassment” and needling them for bringing in witnesses who don’t have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing.

“Any serious impeachment investigation or inquiry relies on firsthand sworn testimony of witnesses to high crimes or misdemeanors,” Ocasio-Cortez said, before forcing all of the witnesses to acknowledge that they couldn’t offer any direct testimony about wrongdoing by the target of the impeachment inquiry, President Joe Biden.

The witnesses are legal scholars and fraud experts — and weren’t involved in any of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, which are at the center of the impeachment saga.

Instead, they offered their professional opinions about the evidence previously uncovered by House Republicans, information from Hunter Biden’s criminal cases, and press reports.

Democrats on the panel have also demanded Republicans call in Rudy Giuliani and one of his former associates, Lev Parnas, who sought dirt on President Biden in Ukraine.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Democrat from Maryland, held up a sign during the impeachment inquiry hearing and repeatedly shouted “where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?”

Democrats have said that Giuliani and Parnas should be called in as witnesses because they would refute Republican allegations. They investigated President Biden over Ukraine in 2019 and did not find any wrongdoing.

Back in June, House Democrats released a transcript of Parnas’ interview with Congress in January 2020 that refute a key unverified allegation that President Joe Biden was involved in an illegal foreign bribery scheme. And in July, Parnas called on Comer to end his Biden family investigation in a letter obtained by CNN. 

In their effort to rebut Republican attacks on the foreign money Hunted Biden received, Democrats have pointed to the money that Trump’s son-in-law received from Saudi Arabia.

“We also know that just months after Jared left the White House, the Saudi royal family gave him $2 billion — with a B — into the Kushner hedge fund,” Rep. Mike Garcia, a Democrat from California, said. “This is a man who was put at the head of Middle East policy in the White House.”

The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.

“We also know that Hunter Biden never held any sort of public office, and there is no evidence that he ever influenced any kind of policy in the White House,” Garcia said.

Republicans have responded that Kushner had a business and expertise, while Hunter Biden did not have any expertise when he hired to the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks a hearing on Thursday that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”

Facts First: This needs context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”

White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”

Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.

Some inside the GOP are expressing frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that President Joe Biden has committed impeachable offenses. 

One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”

The bar for today’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.

But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.

Rep. Jim Jordan speaks during the House Oversight Committee impeachment inquiry hearing into President Joe Biden, on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

At the Thursday hearing, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.

Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

“Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.

Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”

When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”

When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”

Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.

A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.

Rep Jim Jordan delivers remarks during a House Oversight Committee hearing titled "The Basis for an Impeachment Inquiry of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr." on Capitol Hill on September 28, 2023 in Washington, DC.

In remarks at the Thursday hearing, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.  

“We learned yesterday, in the search warrant … examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.” 

Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department. 

The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board. 

The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”  

Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.

Former assistant attorney general Eileen O'Connor speaks at a House Oversight and Accountability Committee impeachment inquiry hearing into US President Joe Biden on Thursday in Washington, DC.

Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities. 

Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

Eileen O’Connor, a former Justice Department tax official during the Bush administration, who has been an outspoken critic of Hunter Biden, said the IRS whistleblower allegations about the Hunter Biden investigation were “d — turbing.” 

She pointed to IRS agent Gary Shapley’s claim that the prosecutor leading the investigation, US Attorney David —Weiss, had said he was not the decidins authority on whether to bring charges. However, other witnesses in the October 2022 meeting where Weiss allegedly made that remark have disputed Shapley’s testimony in their own depositions with House investigators. 

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep.Jamie Raskin and Chairman James Comer speak as they attend a House Oversight and Accountability Committee impeachment inquiry hearing into President Joe Biden, focused on his son Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Thursday.

Democratic ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland brought a government shutdown countdown clock to today’s impeachment inquiry hearing — a reminder that the government funding expires at midnight on Saturday night, and the government will shut down if lawmakers can not reach a deal before then.

But even if the government shuts down, House Republicans are planning to plow ahead with their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, though a lapse in federal funding could present logistical challenges to their investigative work.

In recent days, House Republicans — like all federal agencies — have been working behind the scenes to figure out which of their operations and staffers will be deemed “essential” if the government shuts down at midnight on Saturday.

And it has been determined that the GOP-led committees heading the Biden impeachment inquiry will fall under that umbrella, according to multiple Republican lawmakers and aides, though formal shutdown plans are still being finalized.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer said a potential shutdown, now just days away, will have no impact on his staff and plans to keep issuing subpoenas, telling CNN on Tuesday, “We’re going to keep going.” For reference, there are a total of 47 lawmakers on the Republican-led House Oversight Committee. See the full list of committee members.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan said his staff has been deemed essential and will continue with the steady stream of interviews his panel has lined up, including with top officials at the Department of Justice.

“We’ve got a number of them scheduled,” Jordan told CNN. “Every week there’s a whole roster of folks.”

Hearings are still allowed to take place even if lawmakers fail to keep the government funded, according to a Republican aide.

But it could be tough optics to use government resources to hold public hearings on the GOP’s Biden investigations while thousands of federal employees and military personnel aren’t receiving paychecks and as things like food stamps and housing assistance start to dry up.

Read more about the inquiry.

Bruce Dubinsky, Founder of Dubinsky Consulting, speaks with former Assistant Attorney General Eileen O'Connor, before the start of a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.

Three witnesses were just sworn in to testify at today’s House Oversight Committee’s first impeachment inquiry hearing of President Joe Biden.

“This week, the House Oversight Committee will present evidence uncovered to date and hear from legal and financial experts about crimes the Bidens may have committed as they brought in millions at the expense of U.S. interests,” House Oversight Committee chair James Comer said in a statement Monday.

None of the witnesses appear to have direct knowledge of what House Republicans have claimed about Biden.

Republicans have not provided any evidence to date of wrongdoing by the president.

Comer told CNN that he wanted the witnesses of the first hearing to be expert financial and constitutional witnesses. 

Here are the witnesses who were just sworn in and will speak during the hearing, according to the statement:

Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Rep. Jason Smith during a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.

At the House Oversight Committee’s first impeachment hearing, House Republicans, led by chairman Rep. James Comer, opened with a series of lofty claims against President Joe Biden, in an attempt to connect him to his son’s business dealings overseas.

Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released  internal IRS documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.

Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin, second right top, speaks on the Democratic side of the aisle, as the House Oversight Committee begins an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, on Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Democratic Ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, referencing the looming presidential shutdown and former President Donald Trump’s social media posts, insisted that House Republicans have moved “from a Trump-ordered government shutdown to a Trump-ordered impeachment process.” 

Professor Jonathan Turley, former Assistant Attorney General for the US Department of Justice Tax Division Eileen O’Connor, Bruce Dubinsky, and Professor Michael Gerhardt during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee impeachment inquiry hearing into US President Joe Biden, focused on his son Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Thursday.

House Republicans hold their first impeachment hearing Thursday, to start publicly making their case after struggling for months to tie President Joe Biden to his son’s foreign business dealings and to corral support inside the GOP conference for impeachment.

Their first hearing, however, isn’t being used to unveil any new evidence or witness testimony, and the trio of witnesses testifying aren’t involved in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation.

Still, Thursday’s hearing – which is before the House Oversight Committee – will lay the groundwork for the battle lines over the GOP-led impeachment inquiry, which has been ramping up with more subpoenas and the release of new documents. Republicans to date have not uncovered evidence showing Joe Biden receiving any money from his son’s business endeavors, and they argue the impeachment inquiry puts them in the best position to obtain the documents they’re seeking.

Democrats counter that Republicans haven’t found evidence linking the president because it doesn’t exist, and charge that the whole impeachment endeavor is an exercise to muddy the waters for former President Donald Trump and the four indictments he’s facing.

Here’s what to watch:

Witnesses don’t have firsthand knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business dealings

The GOP witnesses aren’t fact witnesses and don’t have firsthand knowledge of anything regarding Hunter Biden’s overseas deals or his father’s potential involvement.

This contrasts with House Democrats’ first public hearing in 2019 during Trump’s first impeachment, where a senior US diplomat directly implicated Trump in the Ukraine pressure schemes. House Democrats, however, didn’t hold any hearings in 2021 before impeaching Trump for a second time for inciting the January 6, 2021, attack.

Republicans release tax and bank statements

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told CNN last week that at the first hearing, he wanted a financial expert to speak to bank records pertaining to the Biden family’s business dealings and a constitutional expert to discuss why an impeachment inquiry is warranted.

But Thursday’s hearing is just one of several steps House Republicans have taken this week in their investigation. The committees spearheading the probe also released records related to Hunter Biden and are seeking additional documents to try to bolster their probe.

Dems bash GOP impeachment “derangement”

Democrats are expected to attack the legitimacy of the impeachment inquiry at Thursday’s hearing, while noting that the hearing is taking place at the same time that House Republicans are unable or unwilling to pass bills to keep the government from shutting down.

Read more details about the inquiry.

On the eve of their first official impeachment inquiry hearing, the House GOP released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”

House Oversight Chair James Comer has previously said that the framework had to be finished before he could issue subpoenas to Hunter and James Biden.

House Republicans opted not to vote to formally authorize their impeachment inquiry.

The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling,” none of which Republicans have proved yet.  

At this point, Republicans said in the document that their inquiry will focus on answering four main questions: 

Republicans say in the memo they’ve already obtained thousands of documents but plan to seek additional records from the president and his family members, as well as officials from both the Obama and Biden administrations — and are willing to issue subpoenas to ensure compliance. 

“(T)he Committees anticipate — based on statements made to the Committees during their regular oversight work — that certain individuals will require subpoenas to appear or cooperate with the Committees’ impeachment inquiry in a timely manner,” the memo states. 

“The Committees will use all of the tools at their disposal to conduct a thorough and needed investigation and fulfill the constitutional responsibility of determining whether articles of impeachment against President Biden should be drafted and referred to the full House.”

Finally, the framework says they will follow the evidence wherever it leads and thus “the investigation could head in directions that the Committees do not currently foresee.”

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy walks back into his office after announcing an impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Joe Biden to members of the news media at the U.S. Capitol on September 12, 2023 in Washington, DC.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced September 12 he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, even as they have yet to prove allegations he directly profited off his son’s foreign business deals.

The move comes amid increasing pressure from his right flank to move ahead with the inquiry, including some on his far right who have threatened to oust McCarthy from his speakership if he does not move swiftly enough on such an investigation. McCarthy is also trying to secure votes as part of negotiations to keep the government funded beyond the September 30 deadline to avert a shutdown.

Impeachment issue divides congressional Republicans: Launching an impeachment investigation is also likely to divide GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as some Republicans — even frequent critics of Biden and his administration – have said publicly they think pursuing such a probe is a bad idea. CNN reported Monday that Republicans in the Senate are nervous that the push could backfire politically and give Biden a boost — all the while distracting from their efforts to paint the president as out of touch on the economy.

“We got so many things we need to be focusing on,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican, said when asked about impeaching Biden. “I don’t see the glaring evidence that says we need to move forward, I didn’t see it in the Trump case and voted against it. I don’t see it in this case.”

And some members of McCarthy’s conference have also pushed back against the impeachment effort, raising the question about whether in such a narrowly divided chamber, does the speaker have a majority to support an inquiry — a vote McCarthy does not appear willing to have at this point.

But McCarthy is facing an increasingly impatient right flank among House Republicans. His announcement came just hours before conservative Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz – who has been agitating for the effort to formally launch an impeachment inquiry – brought forward a motion to remove McCarthy as speaker if he does not comply with his list of demands.

In a floor speech, Gaetz called McCarthy’s announcement “rushed” and “a baby step.”

Read more about the impeachment inquiry.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pauses to talk to reporters as he heads to the House Chamber for a vote at the US Capitol on September 27, 2023 in Washington, DC.

By opening an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unleashed an unpredictable and treacherous new political force into what is already the most abnormal election of modern times.

McCarthy effectively set up partisan counterprogramming to the looming criminal trials of his patron, former President Donald Trump, who’s the front-runner for the GOP nomination to take on Biden.

The key question heading into the third impeachment effort in three and a half years should be whether this attempt to effectively reverse a democratic election by ousting Biden is justified. The GOP failure so far to provide much more than innuendo — that Biden corruptly used his power while vice president to profit from his son Hunter’s business ventures – suggests it is not.

There is a crazed sense of irony and history coming full circle this week in Washington.

Trump was impeached the first time for effectively using presidential power and the prospect of military aid to try to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate a criminal investigation into Biden, his future opponent in a presidential election. Now, his proxies in the House GOP are effectively weaponizing an impeachment inquiry of Biden to try to again destroy Trump’s potential opponent in the next presidential election.

And if Trump wins back the White House, Zelensky may find that the 47th president’s revenge for his failure to act the first time is a cut off of military aid Ukraine needs to remain a sovereign nation after an invasion by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised.

That is not to say that Hunter Biden did not create a perception of a conflict of interest by earning millions of dollars in places like Ukraine and China while his father had a large role in those foreign policy portfolios in the Obama administration. Some of Joe Biden’s own statements on his son’s activity are less than candid. And Republicans have established that Hunter Biden flew on Air Force Two and met foreign business associates on his father’s foreign trips. Then-Vice President Biden attended two dinners with his son and his business associates in Washington, DC, although one of Hunter’s associates testified that no business was discussed. Still, there was always the possibility that Hunter Biden’s activity could embarrass his father politically or be seen as an attempt to peddle access.

The White House insists that the president did nothing wrong — and Republicans haven’t provided solid evidence that he has. That’s already making their impeachment probe look like a politicized circus — one that’s being used as a political tool rather than a constitutional remedy of last resort.

The pitched political battle in the weeks to come could go a long way toward settling which version of two dueling narratives solidifies in the public mind — that’s if America is not so deeply polarized that the facts of a case simply depend on one’s partisan viewpoint.

Read the full analysis.

Rep. James Comer leaves a House Republican caucus meeting at the Capitol on September 19, 2023 in Washington, DC.

House Republicans are taking their next official steps in their impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden by preparing a hearing and subpoenas to members of the Biden family, as well as scheduling the first hearing in the investigation for September 28.

A committee spokesperson told CNN that the hearing will focus on the constitutional and legal questions Republicans are raising about Biden.

While the witnesses are still being finalized, House Oversight Chairman James Comer told CNN he plans to have a financial expert speak to the bank records he has uncovered pertaining to the Biden family’s business dealings and a constitutional expert to discuss why an impeachment inquiry is warranted.

“It’s an informative hearing where we’re going to have some experts in different areas of the law that can answer questions pertaining to specific crimes, as well as to educate and inform exactly what an impeachment inquiry is, and why you do an impeachment inquiry,” Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, told CNN.

The Oversight panel is also poised to issue its first subpoenas to the president’s son and brother, Hunter and James Biden, as early as this week, according to the spokesperson. The subpoenas are the first direct outreach to members of the Biden family and are expected to be for their personal and business records.

Republicans have made Hunter Biden’s business dealings a central component of their impeachment inquiry, but there is no public evidence to date that the president personally received any money.

The White House slammed the committee for its plans to hold the hearing, accusing the GOP are prioritizing a “political stunt” over attempts to avert a government shutdown.

“Extreme House Republicans are already telegraphing their plans to try to distract from their own chaotic inability to govern and the impacts of it on the country,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement. “Staging a political stunt hearing in the waning days before they may shut down the government reveals their true priorities: to them, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families.”

Read more.

President Joe Biden meets with members of the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities at the Roosevelt Room of the White House on September 25, 2023 in Washington, DC.

President Joe Biden’s team has begun to execute an impeachment playbook more than a year in the making: Discredit the investigators while sticking to the business of governing.

Biden’s aides spent the August congressional recess honing their plans after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested in late July he was likely to open an impeachment inquiry.

But they’d been hiring staff and gaming out possible scenarios for months before that, consulting veterans of past impeachments and determining the contours of their response.

The principal objective for Biden’s team is countering what many Democrats fear could become an ingrained narrative of self-dealing about the president — despite a lack of any evidence so far of wrongdoing.

“If you don’t answer it, it can sink into the voter psyche. They’re walking that line,” a person familiar with White House thinking said.

On September 13, Biden made his first public comments on McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry, linking the inquiry to the upcoming showdown over funding the government. Congress faces a September 30 deadline to keep the government open and McCarthy is facing deep divisions within his own conference about how to handle the matter.

“Well, I tell you what, I don’t know quite why, but they just knew they wanted to impeach me. And now, the best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down the government.”

“So look, look, I got a job to do. Everybody always asked about impeachment. I get up every day, not a joke, not focused on impeachment. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got to deal with the issues that affect the American people every single solitary day.”

The impeachment inquiry comes at a fragile political moment for the president. Widespread concern about his age and reelection prospects have caused jitters in Democratic circles. Some allies have voiced private concern at how intense attention on his son Hunter Biden could become a drag on him, politically and emotionally.

But Biden’s advisers believe the inquiry announced by McCarthy could be used to their advantage if Republicans are viewed as overstepping in their claims or shirking their governing responsibilities, according to officials who laid out their plans.

Read more about how Biden prepared for the inquiry.