House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday that the House could move forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden if his administration doesn’t provide documents Republicans are seeking.
During a Fox Business interview Tuesday night, McCarthy, R-Calif., was asked whether he has made up his mind whether to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden.
“The thing that holds up whether we’ll do an impeachment inquiry: Provide us the documents we’re asking,” he said. “The whole determination here is how the Bidens handle this.”
“If they provide us the documents, there wouldn’t be a need for an impeachment inquiry,” he added. “But if they withhold the documents and fight like they have now to not provide to the American public what they deserve to know, we will move forward with impeachment inquiry when we come back into session.”
McCarthy also raised allegations that he mentioned in an interview last month with Fox News host Sean Hannity. The House speaker told Hannity at the time that allegations stemming from Republican probes into the business dealings of family members of Biden are “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry.”
The allegations include that Biden family members received payments from foreign companies and that the Justice Department, according to IRS whistleblowers, has treated the Biden family “differently” in its investigation into Hunter Biden, he noted.
“When Biden was running for office, he told the public he has never talked about business. He said his family has never received a dollar from China, which we now prove is not true,” McCarthy alleged in the interview last month.
“If you’re sitting in our position today, we would know none of this if Republicans had not taken the majority,” he continued. “We only followed where the information has taken us. But this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed.”
McCarthy’s office and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The White House and Democrats have criticized McCarthy’s comments and GOP-led probes into Biden and his family. White House spokesperson Ian Sams pushed back at a tweet by McCarthy this month claiming House investigators “have proven President Biden repeatedly lied about his involvement in his family’s foreign business dealings.”
“McCarthy keeps lying about their ‘investigations’ because the truth is their own witnesses testified President Biden wasn’t involved and did nothing wrong, and bank records they subpoenaed show no involvement,” Sams tweeted. “Yet they go on wasting time and tax dollars on their wild goose chase.”
Republicans in June decided to forgo an immediate vote on a Biden impeachment resolutionled by Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., by sending it to the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees amid escalating internal GOP tensions.
The move came after McCarthy urged rank-and-file Republicans at a closed-door meeting to oppose Boebert’s resolution, arguing that such an important issue should go through the committee process, three GOP sources who heard the comments confirmed at the time.
McCarthy and other Republicans had argued that a quick impeachment vote would be “premature” if it took place before Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, conclude their sprawling investigations into Biden, his family and his administration.
The impeachment resolution came after Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in May said a whistleblower had informed them that the FBI had a document known as an FD-1023 that included an unverified allegation from a human source who alleged Joe Biden as vice president was involved in a bribery scheme involving a foreign government. Grassley released a redacted version of the FBI informant document last month.
Although McCarthy has floated an impeachment inquiry into Biden, some politically vulnerable and centrist Republicans are conflicted about whether to launch a formal inquiry, typically the first step before impeachment proceedings, NBC News reported.
Kyle Stewart contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
