Would a Biden impeachment help the Democrats?

The launch of an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over his son Hunter's foreign business dealings has raised questions about Republican political prowess.

The House of Representatives has previously voted to impeach just three presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. But the move by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to impeach the current president is "a risky political gamble", said the Financial Times (FT), that "may be as much about preservation of his own political power as the merits of the case".

A tax and firearms case against Hunter Biden does exist and federal prosecutors are reportedly confident they have enough evidence to indict him. However, said the Los Angeles Times, "despite their best efforts", congressional Republicans have "failed to develop credible evidence" that Biden as vice president profited from his son's business dealings. The Biden impeachment inquiry is "so thin you can see right through it", the paper's editorial board added.

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The true motivation is personal, a top former Republican congressional and White House staffer told the FT. "Speaker McCarthy had to do this for his conference – and to keep his job." 

What did the papers say?

McCarthy's decision to unilaterally announce an impeachment investigation with no formal House vote "appeared to be a bid to quell a brewing rebellion among ultraconservative critics", said The New York Times (NYT).

McCarthy claims he has unearthed a "culture of corruption" surrounding the president. The inquiry will focus on whether Biden benefited from the charges of improper business dealings levelled against his son Hunter.

Months of investigations by Republicans, however, "have yet to unearth any concrete evidence of misconduct by Mr Biden, and the allegations have been widely panned by Democrats", said the BBC.

The true motivation for the inquiry, according to the NYT, appears to be that McCarthy is "working to appease far-right lawmakers who have threatened to oust him if he fails to accede to their demands for deep spending cuts that would force a government shutdown at the end of the month".

The apparent lack of evidence is problematic for both the case and the nation, according to two impeachment experts who spoke to Time magazine.

"This is very disturbing for people who study past impeachments, because impeachment is really a very extreme measure," said constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on the history of impeachment. "I honestly don't know that there is any evidence tying the president to corrupt activities when he was vice president or now."

Frank Bowman, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri school of law and author of a book about impeachment, agreed, adding "Biden's Republican pursuers have got exactly zero, zip, bupkis, on any matter that might be impeachable."

What next?

Some Republicans have expressed doubts about the wisdom of bringing impeachment proceedings against the president. 

Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor running for president in 2024 who managed Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings in 1998, said that despite a "lot of smoke" the impeachment inquiry "seems premature". Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor also running in the Republican primary, said he didn't "see evidence yet that would support impeaching Joe Biden". He added: "I think we're cheapening impeachment by doing that kind of thing."

Talking to Time, impeachment experts Bowman and Bobbitt echoed this sentiment.

"This is supposed to be the most extreme sanction in American politics, and if you reach for it every time you think it'll help you in the polls, I fear it will become degraded," Bobbitt said. "It just becomes one more very divisive, poisonous event in a Congress that is already deeply divided and alienated."

Brendan Buck, a former Republican congressional aide, said it could have even worse impacts for Republicans, given Democrats could weaponise the matter against their political rivals.

"Certainly it will rile up the base," Buck said in the FT, “but absent some bombshell… this is something of a gift to the president politically."

Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich, who launched Bill Clinton's impeachment proceedings 25 years ago, said that if Republicans "go too fast, it could backfire".

Clinton was "widely seen to have benefited politically, including with a better than expected performance in that year's midterm election", the FT said.