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Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, has launched an impeachment inquiry into US president Joe Biden, in a move that will further raise political tensions in the world’s largest economy.
The announcement by McCarthy on Tuesday came after mounting pressure from allies of Donald Trump within the party to more aggressively target Biden, even as some Republicans said it could backfire with moderate and swing voters.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McCarthy said the US president had lied “to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s business dealings”.
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption,” McCarthy said. The House Speaker said the inquiry would be led by James Comer, chair of the House oversight committee, and Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, who have both been leading probes into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
The White House has repeatedly denied any allegations of wrongdoing. Many Democrats see the move as a thinly veiled attempt to get revenge for the two impeachments levelled against Trump for his conduct as president, as well as the multiple criminal indictments he is facing.
Impeachment proceedings in the House and a possible trial in the Senate could dominate the political agenda and consume the White House for weeks, taking attention from Trump’s criminal indictments as he runs for the presidency again in 2024.
The key element that Republicans will try to prove is that Biden was directly involved in securing business deals for his son over the years, even though so far they have failed to offer evidence of such actions.
Trump has been urging McCarthy to open impeachment proceedings against Biden, as he tries to portray the president as “crooked” in the same way that he did Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
But some Republicans have been uneasy about the Biden impeachment probe.
“We can waste our time on issues that are not important, or we can focus on issues that are,” Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, told MSNBC on Sunday. Buck noted how difficult it would be for any impeachment of Biden to be followed by a conviction in the Democrat-controlled Senate, which would require a supermajority of votes.
The opening of the impeachment probe comes a few weeks before the September 30 deadline for Congress to approve funding for the government or face a shutdown of many federal operations and offices. Some Republicans had threatened to vote against funding for the government unless McCarthy proceeded with an impeachment inquiry.
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