After a federal indictment of an individual whose allegations, memorialized in an official document held by the feds, have been used by Republicans in furthering what’s become an impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) demanded this week the inquiry be ended. Raskin is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
The debunked allegations were a secondhand account alleging that a top figure at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma claimed large payouts for the president and his son, Hunter Biden.
“Special Counsel Weiss’s investigation is just the most recent to debunk the Ukraine-Burisma conspiracy theory at the heart of this fraudulent impeachment inquiry,” Raskin said. “It is an undeniable fact that Republicans’ allegations against President Biden have always been a tissue of lies built on conspiracy theories, and I formally call on Speaker Johnson, Chairman Comer, and House Republicans to stop promoting this nonsense and end their doomed impeachment inquiry.”
The Oversight panel, led presently by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), has conducted an extensive series of interviews as part of the Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president, consistently falling short in terms of actually connecting the president to ostensible financial corruption. The lack of evidence hasn’t stopped even former President Donald Trump, who remains the front-runner for this year’s GOP presidential nomination, from essentially taking the allegations against Biden as fact.
Trump business entities, meanwhile, evidently took in millions from foreign government sources while Trump was in office as president, per details claimed by House Democrats. Their total covered only four properties, including the now defunct Trump hotel that operated in Washington, D.C., during Trump’s tenure. Raskin has characterized the payments as constituting a violation of the Emoluments Clause to the U.S. Constitution blocking presidents from accepting things of value from foreign sources without Congressional involvement. The Maryland Democrat has called on Trump to effectively return the sum (some $7.8 million) via payments to the U.S. Treasury.
