Some Republicans remain insistent on the potential impeachment of President Joe Biden for ill-defined and unproven misconduct, but it’s not clear it’s working. Reporting, including a new recap from CNN, indicates Republicans have yet to conclusively assemble the votes needed to formally open an impeachment inquiry, though the slim GOP majority in the chamber could still move forward with the early stages of such anyway.
Still, the level of support needed for opening an impeachment inquiry would be the same level needed, presumably, for approving any impeachment, and if Republicans don’t have the former, can they even dream of the latter? CNN didn’t identify the Republican member of Congress speaking thusly, but one said: “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that. And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t I don’t think the evidence exists.”
The loudest voices in support of impeachment include familiar and expected names like Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been insistent upon a swift vote in the chamber regarding the opening of an inquiry once members return for D.C. work following a break throughout August. And top Republicans, from House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) to House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), have been discussing the possibility — though none of these deliberations are close to likely to result in actually removing the president from office. Doing so would require the approval of a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which Democrats control at present.
Republican claims against Biden range from supposed mishandling of the southern border to supposed involvement in ostensibly corrupt business dealings involving his son, Hunter Biden. Former President Donald Trump is predictably clamoring to impeach Biden, questioning the need for establishing a formal inquiry at all.
