Speaker McCarthy approves of President Biden impeachment inquiry
Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the House will launch investigations into President Biden's involvement with his son Hunter's business dealings.
LEARN MOREPosted: 4:00 p.m. EDT Sep 13, 2023
The White House is pushing back on the House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The Biden administration released a 14-page document defending the president; it called the inquiry a stunt filled with "demonstrably false" claims.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy directed the House to open an inquiry to review the president's interactions with his son Hunter and his business dealings.
McCarthy took to X, formerly known as Twitter, Wednesday morning to help alleviate some concerns from some members of the Republican Party, saying that this is not a political stunt.
"The American people deserve to know that public offices are not for sale—and that the federal government is not being used to cover up the actions of a politically-connected family," McCarthy wrote on X. "There are serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct—none of which would be known if not for current House investigations. We will continue to fight for the transparency and accountability the American people demand and deserve."
The White House responded to these claims, saying that the speaker should "get his facts straight."
"Well, I think it's important that the speaker gets his facts straight. I think he's saying a lot of things that are untrue in these allegations, and the truth is that over nine months of investigating the president, the House Republicans have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing because there isn't any evidence of wrongdoing," Ian Sams, Spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, told Scripps News. "The president didn't do anything wrong, and these attacks are baseless and false, and I think that he needs to be held accountable for the things that he's saying."
Sams, who sent out the 14-page memo, stated that McCarthy and the Congressional Republicans received thousands of pages of bank records and Treasury Department financial reports, but not a single one of those records showed any tie to President Biden.
"The House Oversight Committee Chairman needs to explain what he's talking about when he says that there's some kind of obstruction here, because that's certainly not what he's been saying on TV," Sams tells Scripps News. "This is extreme politics at its worst. Speaker McCarthy opening an impeachment without any evidence just because Marjorie Taylor Greene asked him to."
The inquiry into the president comes as the House is also gearing up for a fight over funding as the government is slated to shut down Sep. 30 when current funds run out.
Getting Republican approval for federal spending bills is crucial to preventing a government shutdown, but some Republicans want McCarthy to cut spending even more than he and President Biden agreed to in a budget deal earlier this year.
However, Sams states that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told Speaker McCarthy that if they didn't get an impeachment inquiry, "she was gonna shut down the government," and therefore it could be the main reason why McCarthy "threw them this baseless impeachment inquiry to try to stave off a government shutdown."
But McCarthy reaffirmed that the inquiry is simply to clear the air and obtain answers.
"There’s a lot of accusations out there you just want the answers to," McCarthy told reporters. "Impeachment inquiry simply allows Congress, Republicans and Democrats, to be able to get the answers to the questions."
