House Republicans are unveiling a long-awaited report on their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden this morning, bringing a close to the nearly yearlong investigation that failed to deliver any meaningful action in the House, let alone a conviction in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The nearly 300-page report, jointly released by the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, asserts that “Biden has engaged in impeachable conduct.” It includes a lengthy summary of the House GOP probe, which officially began last September when the inquiry was opened unilaterally by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
House Republicans have been sitting on this final report for weeks, as we scooped last month, while they debated the timing and content of the document. It’s even less relevant now that Biden is no longer the Democratic presidential nominee.
Here’s a key section from the report:
Again, to be clear, this is not going to lead to a Biden impeachment in the House, as many Republicans remain unconvinced that Biden committed high crimes or misdemeanors. While GOP investigators were sometimes able to put Biden closer to his family’s overseas business deals than was previously known, they struggled to prove that the president personally profited off those deals or made policy decisions because of them.
Now, top Republicans have claimed from the outset that their goal wasn’t to impeach Biden, arguing it was purely a fact-finding mission. But by many accounts, the investigation failed to deliver on some of the GOP’s biggest claims. Even Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who was largely the face of the probe, was eager to move on from it.
And it looks like he already has. In the last few weeks, Comer has launched investigations into Vice President Kamala Harris’ role overseeing the administration’s border policy and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s potential connections to China.
– Melanie Zanona
