Republicans continue to search, without any success, for evidence to justify the impeachment promoted by their hard wing in Congress against Joe Biden. They accuse him and his family of having benefited from his position as vice president during Barack Obama's term (2009-2017) to promote "shady business practices" in foreign countries.
After gathering Biden's bank records and interviewing eight witnesses, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Republicans, summoned the president's younger brother, James Biden, behind closed doors this Wednesday, who has testified in relation to some loans. that Joe did to him when he was no longer in office, as well as the president's alleged involvement in his business transactions. He is the first member of the Biden family to testify before the Committee, which next week will interview his son, Hunter, already charged in a separate judicial process for illegal possession of weapons.
James Biden has stated that his brother "never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest" in his businesses. "I have had a 50-year career in a variety of companies," he said, "and Joe Biden has never had any participation in those activities," as stated in a document with his initial statements before the Committee. In each business adventure "I have relied on my own talent, judgment, ability and personal relationships, and never on my status as Joe Biden's brother," he maintains.
Until last week, Republicans had based their investigation on the statements of an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who claimed that Biden and his son Hunter had carried out illicit business in an alleged bribery scheme with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. However, the special prosecutor leading the investigation on Thursday charged the informant with having given "false testimony" to the FBI and assured that Smirnov admitted in his statement to contacts with "officials associated with Russian intelligence," which would discredit the accusations. of the.
This episode has dismantled the central axis of the investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, led by Republicans, which seeks to initiate an impeachment – the main tool at the disposal of Congress to punish a political office –, which requires conclusive evidence of the commission of a serious crime.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the committee's top Democrat, said the demonstration of the whistleblower's ties to Russia should be enough to drop the investigation, which has failed to produce any substantive evidence in the two months since it began. Since last December, the Committee has gathered dozens of bank records and called nine witnesses to testify.
"This impeachment is nothing more than a useless investigation based on Russian disinformation and propaganda," Raskin said before closed-door testimony this Wednesday. "I don't understand why we have to keep up this charade any longer."
The person in charge of starting this process was Kevin McCarthy, the previous president of the Lower House, who was reluctant to do so for months until he gave in in September to pressure from the most conservative sector of his party, the same one that later organized a boycott to remove him. .
His successor and the current speaker, Mike Johnson, close to Donald Trump, is determined to put the impeachment to a vote in the coming weeks, when Biden's brother and son have testified, but it will hardly be approved by the slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Several of the most moderate Republicans have spoken out against using this constitutional provision so lightly and without evidence, something that already happened last week with the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his management of the border.
If approved, the impeachment has no signs of succeeding in the Senate, with a Democratic majority. But it will have fulfilled, in part, the objective of the Republicans: to sow doubts about the figure of the president and Democratic candidate in this election year, in which he will probably face Trump in November, the first president in history to receive two impeachment proceedings. impeachment during his term.
