Directing Certain Committees to Continue Ongoing Investigations Into Whether Sufficient Grounds Exist for the Impeachment of Joseph Biden, President of the United States

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we are here for one reason and one reason alone: Donald Trump demanded that Republicans impeach, so they are going to impeach.

These Republicans don't work for you, the American people. They work for Donald Trump. He says, ``Jump.'' They respond, ``How high?''

This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow and a distraction from the fact that Republicans have done nothing.

They have the wrong priorities. The American people think they are failing miserably, and Republicans need a diversion. So they are weaponizing and abusing impeachment--one of the most somber and serious things that Congress can do--to attack President Joe Biden.

I get it. They are upset Donald Trump lost. Some of them still don't believe he lost. Many of them are upset that his violent insurrection did not succeed on January 6, and today they want to finish the job. This is a continuation of their crusade to overturn the election.

They have spent a year dredging up every conspiracy you can imagine, Mr. Speaker, against Joe Biden, and still their own investigation, their own Members, their own witnesses, and their own internal documents all say that President Joe Biden is a man of integrity who follows the law. Every single one of their crazy claims has been exhaustively debunked, and, yet, here we are.

The only thing they have uncovered is that Joe Biden is a good dad and that he loves his family. His son Hunter lost his mom and sister in a terrible car accident and lost his brother to cancer. He experienced a lot of traumas, and, sadly, he got caught up with drugs. Republicans are weaponizing this addiction and using it to attack President Biden, a man of decency and integrity.

Frankly, it is one of, if not the most, despicable thing I have seen in my whole career here in Congress.

Republicans talk about an open and transparent process. Give me a break.

Yesterday, Rules Committee Republicans blocked Democrats from adding the words ``open and transparent'' to this resolution. They voted against requiring a single open hearing. They didn't even put our amendment in the official committee report. I have never seen anything like that. They are so afraid of openness and transparency that they are literally trying to hide our amendments from the public record.

They don't want an open and transparent process. They are allergic to transparency. They want no transparency, so they can go on FOX News, distort the facts, and keep this whole ridiculous charade going. Their whole investigation is built on lies. It is an extreme political stunt designed to distract from how incompetent Republicans are and how obsessed they are with Donald Trump, a twice impeached ex-President who has been indicted more times than he has been elected. How pathetic.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I would need a map to get out of the rabbit hole Mr. Comer just took us down.

Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, if you want to know what an impeachable offense looks like, here it is: When that man, the wannabe dictator, told that angry, violent mob to attack this Capitol Building where we all are right now to overturn a free and fair election. That is what a smoking gun looks like.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I need to get a decoder ring.

Leger Fernandez), who is a distinguished member of Rules Committee.

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, every conspiracy theory we just heard has been debunked, not true, and distorted from the facts because this impeachment inquiry is political vengeance directed by a twice- impeached, four times indicted President and carried out by extreme MAGA Republicans.

Republicans rejected my amendment to require the committees to hold at least one public hearing.

Why?

It is because 11 months and a mountain of evidence and documents gathered so far prove that President Biden respected the rule of law and fought corruption.

Republicans want to continue a secret investigation so they can distort the facts.

For example, Republicans tried to create a scandal about the $4,140 Hunter paid to his dad in 2018.

What really happened?

Joe Biden paid his son's truck payments while Hunter struggled with addiction. Hunter paid his dad back. A parent's love is never without pain. A parent doesn't stop loving a child struggling with addiction.

Americans will see in those truck payments some of their own attempts to help their struggling kids.

Shame on my colleagues for politicizing a parent's pain. Americans know what evidence of an impeachment looks like.

The Capitol Police who were battered and beaten as Trump tried to overturn an election know what an impeachable offense feels like.

This puppet show is more of the same attack on our democracy that we saw here.

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Mr. McGOVERN. I remind the gentlewoman that Hunter Biden was here today. He wants to testify in public, but Republicans said no because they want to do it behind closed doors so they can go on FOX News and cherry-pick facts and figures and distort the truth.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans aren't interested in transparency in this investigation, and apparently the Rules Committee isn't either. In our markup yesterday, Democrats offered nine amendments. They were all voted down by Republicans, but in the official Rules Committee report, contrary to years of committee practice and tradition, the majority left out descriptions of those amendments.

Instead of reading, for example, that Republicans defeated an amendment to add ``open and transparent'' to investigative proceedings, members of the public will only see that Republicans voted down ``amendment No. 4.''

Instead of defeating an amendment requiring committees to hold an open hearing as part of the investigation, the Record will show that the majority simply voted down ``amendment No. 5.''

Republicans are literally hiding Democratic amendments about transparency. You cannot make this stuff up, Mr. Speaker, and this is especially shocking to me because it is so out of line with the way this committee has run historically under this chairman. I am deeply disappointed, and I hope that this isn't an indication of how the majority intends to operate in the future.

Further, to make sure that these amendments show up somewhere in this historical Record, I am going to put the summaries in the Congressional Record.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the summaries of our nine amendments, which Republicans intentionally left out of the Rules Committee report. Democratic Amendments to H. Res. 918

1. Offered by Rep. McGovern--adds a preamble describing President Joe Biden's career of honorable public service and former President Trump's multiple impeachments and 91 pending felony charges.

2. Offered by Rep. Leger Fernandez--Adds a preamble stating that the months-long Republican-led investigation into President Joe Biden has yielded no evidence of wrongdoing by the President.

3. Offered by Rep. Scanlon--Adds a preamble describing the tens of thousands of pages of records provided by the Administration and dozens of hours of testimony heard as part of the investigation.

4. Offered by Rep. Neguse--Adds ``Open and Transparent'' to investigative proceedings by the committees on Oversight and Accountability, Ways and Means, and the Judiciary.

5. Offered by Rep. Leger Fernandez--Requires the committees on Oversight and Accountability, Ways and Means, and the Judiciary to each hold at least one open hearing as part of the investigation.

6. Offered by Rep. Scanlon--Provides that a chair or ranking member cannot issue a subpoena in furtherance of the impeachment inquiry if they did not comply with a House, committee, or select committee subpoena.

7. Offered by Rep. McGovern--Strikes the provision deeming H. Res. 917 as adopted.

8. Offered by Rep. McGovern--Amends H. Res. 917 to exclude access to grand jury material related to a pending criminal prosecution, a prosecution arising from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, or a case in which former President Trump is a defendant.

9. Offered by Rep. Neguse--Adds a preamble stating that by December 11 in the first session of the 117th and 116th Congresses, 71 and 78 bills had been enacted, respectively, versus 22 in the 118th Congress; and stating that the House spent 26 days electing two Speakers in 2023.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, Members should be advised that Joe Biden, not Hunter Biden, is President of the United States.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from Time magazine titled, `` `Absolutely Shocking': Impeachment Experts Say Biden Inquiry May Be Weakest in U.S. History.'' [From TIME, Sept. 12, 2023]

`Absolutely Shocking': Impeachment Experts Say Biden Inquiry May Be Weakest in U.S. History (By Mini Racker)

Speaker Kevin McCarthy took the rare step on Tuesday of announcing the launch of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his son Hunter's foreign business dealings.

The House has voted to impeach just three Presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. But even the launch of an impeachment inquiry against a President has only happened a handful of times. Two impeachment experts tell TIME that there is less evidence implicating Biden of wrongdoing than in any of those previous inquiries.

``This is very disturbing for people who study past impeachments, because impeachment is really a very extreme measure,'' says constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt, a professor at Columbia Law School and expert on the history of impeachment who co-authored an updated edition of Charles Black's classic legal text, Impeachment: A Handbook, in 2018. ``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 the book High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump, said that McCarthy's decision did not appear to be based on the evidence House Republicans have gathered thus far.

``Biden's Republican pursuers have got exactly zero, zip, bupkis, on any matter that might be impeachable,'' says Bowman.

The Constitution gives Congress the right to impeach and remove from office a president, vice president, or federal civil officer for committing ``treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.'' Historically, before the House votes on impeachment itself--the misconduct charge brought by a legislative body--it has usually launched an impeachment inquiry, a formal mechanism that moves the process along. However, an inquiry is not a legal requirement for impeaching a president, and the rules around what constitutes one are poorly defined.

According to Bowman, setting aside whether the five previous presidents who faced impeachment proceedings ought to have been impeached and convicted, there was at least some evidence indicating that they committed misconduct. The impeachment inquiry into President Richard Nixon, who resigned before the House could formally impeach him, was preceded by a special prosecutor investigation examining his ties to the Watergate burglary, as well as a Senate Special Committee inquiry into the break-in that stretched more than a year and reporting by journalists suggesting that responsibility for the incident and attempts to cover it up stretched into the administration. Two decades later, nearly a month before the House launched an impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton, independent counsel Ken Starr released a report outlining 11 possible grounds for impeachment, including lying under oath and obstructing justice.

``In every single case, there was very significant evidence of presidential wrongdoing before the formal inquiry was begun,'' Bowman says, ``The House, and House leadership, took the responsibility of formally opening such an inquiry extremely seriously. Nancy Pelosi, in the first impeachment, resisted calls for impeachment of Trump for two years.''

McCarthy's inquiry, Bowman suggests, lacks that discipline.

``What they're doing here is absolutely shocking,'' says Bowman, who added that House Republicans ``have no interest at all in preserving the basic integrity of the process, or indeed their own power as legislators in legitimate opposition and tension with the executive branch.''

House Republicans have spent all year investigating Hunter Biden in hopes of proving that Joe Biden profited off his son's business dealings, particularly while Joe Biden was Vice President. There has been no conclusive evidence indicating Joe Biden did anything wrong.

McCarthy previously indicated that the full House would hold a vote to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden. Such a vote would need the support of nearly every Republican in the narrowly-divided chamber. But nearly 20 House Republicans have expressed resistance to voting for it, and a full House vote could open them up to political liability.

The Speaker's decision to open the inquiry without a vote has precedent; Pelosi did the same thing ahead of Trump's first impeachment, holding a full House vote to formally endorse the inquiry only weeks later. Trump's second impeachment, following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, was not preceded by any inquiry at all. Congress has also voted to impeach federal judges without first opening inquiries.

Back in 2019, when Democrats controlled the House, McCarthy and his Republican allies slammed them for opening an impeachment inquiry against Trump without a vote, suggesting that doing so made the process illegitimate.

``The fact that, for a period of time between September 24 and October 31 of that year, the impeachment inquiry for Trump was going on without a full House vote, became an excuse for Republicans, first in the House, and then in the Senate, to vote against impeachment for Mr. Trump,'' Bowman says.

There are no clear standards for launching an impeachment inquiry, nor are there specific signifiers differentiating it from other kinds of investigations. Ultimately, the decision to initiate one is usually left up to House leadership.

``To the extent they have a plausible end game here, other than just to keep this in the news and to dirty up Biden broadly speaking, presumably it will be to issue subpoenas that that are sufficiently intrusive, either to Biden's personal life or administration workings, that Biden will resist, and then to try to impeach him for obstruction of Congress,'' says Bowman.

There's some historical precedent for that theory; the third article of impeachment ultimately issued against Nixon centered on his refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas brought as part of the impeachment inquiry into him. Plus, McCarthy previously suggested that boosting Congress' ability to subpoena Biden's financial documents was a key motivation for the inquiry.

Both Bowman and Bobbitt suggested the current inquiry could weaken the federal system of checks and balances by devaluing the very concept of impeachment.

``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 says. ``It just becomes one more very divisive, poisonous event in a Congress that is already deeply divided and alienated.''

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, This article quotes Philip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia Law saying impeachment ``is supposed to be the most extreme sanction in American politics, and if you reach for it every time you think it will help you in the polls, I fear it will become degraded.''

Mr. Speaker, everything the gentleman just said has been debunked, and it is just nuts.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I will tell the gentleman what is a mockery: This is a mockery. We hear the same tired, old conspiracy theories being recycled over and over again that have all been debunked.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Goldman) to further debunk them.

Mr. GOLDMAN of New York. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in staunch opposition to this resolution.

The Republicans have already spent 12 months on this exact investigation. They have obtained more than 100,000 pages of documents and dozens and dozens of hours of witness testimony, but there is simply not a shred of evidence proving any wrongdoing by President Biden related to his son or otherwise.

Whatever complaints that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have about how the Department of Justice investigated a private citizen, Hunter Biden, you should ask Donald Trump and Bill Barr, who were in power at the time that this investigation was going on.

Since there is no evidence, now we are going to move the goalposts, claiming an impeachment inquiry is necessary to gather more evidence, but Chairman Comer himself said earlier this year that he had received 100 percent compliance from the administration, and they can only cite two low-level career officials at the Department of Justice who have not testified, even though their supervisors have.

Just this morning, Hunter Biden showed up to the Capitol ready to provide evidence. The Republicans refused to take his testimony.

How can you sit there saying you need more evidence when you prevent the central witness in the investigation from giving you evidence?

What are you afraid of?

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Mr. McGOVERN. Wasserman Schultz).

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this perverse, illegitimate effort to do Donald Trump's political dirty work.

This resolution is nothing more than an extreme political stunt built on absolutely zero evidence of wrongdoing. The one thing it does prove is that Republicans are focused on the wrong priorities. This resolution clearly has nothing to do with protecting the Constitution from high crimes and misdemeanors.

How do we know? Because a year of investigation, piles of documents, and a herd of the Republicans' own witnesses confirm there is zero evidence of wrongdoing. Instead, the Republicans' wasteful witch hunt just confirms that President Biden is a good and honorable man.

What this resolution really does is cover up a full year of do- nothing Republican policies that ignored our families' needs and neglected an array of global threats to democracy.

Worse, this resolution tries to obscure the corrupt and criminal acts of the former President and want-to-be dictator Donald Trump.

This extreme political stunt is built upon the sick, twisted extremism of House Republicans and totally unmasks their complete absence of an agenda that helps the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on this resolution.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Clark), the distinguished Democratic whip.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, it is amazing. A pattern is developing. If you will notice, my Republican friends never talk about Joe Biden. It is all Hunter Biden. They seem to be obsessed with him. I don't know. They need to get some help.

Mr. ROBERT GARCIA of California. Mr. Speaker, this impeachment inquiry is a political stunt with zero evidence.

We are here today not because of any wrongdoing by President Biden but because Donald Trump wants revenge. Welcome to the Donald Trump revenge show.

He is running a campaign promising to destroy democracy and the rule of law and will soon be found guilty of serious crimes. The American people reject this toxic and disgusting agenda.

That is why Trump's allies here in Congress are trying to rescue him. They are throwing everything they can at President Biden, from misleading leaks to outright fabrications and lies. They are even trying to sell debunked Rudy Giuliani conspiracy theories.

Let's be clear: The White House has provided thousands of pages of bank records, statements from personal bank accounts, and testimony from the President's family, but none of this is enough for the extreme MAGA GOP.

This is all to appease the con man and the criminal Donald Trump, but make no mistake: The American people will see through this entire impeachment sham.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 12, a bill that would ensure every American has full access to essential reproductive healthcare, including abortion care.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman from Oklahoma have any other speakers?

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Mr. McGOVERN. Jayapal).

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud.

Explains Impeachment Push: `Donald J. Trump 2024, Baby!''' [From RollingStone, Dec. 13, 2023] GOP Rep. Explains Impeachment Push: `Donald J. Trump 2024, Baby!' (By Nikki McCann Ramirez)

House Republicans will vote Wednesday on whether to formalize their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The party has struggled to gin up a legitimate rationale for moving forward with the inquiry, which has yet to produce any credible evidence of wrongdoing, but one Republican is saying the quiet part out loud.

When Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) was asked Tuesday on Capitol Hill what he's hoping to gain from an impeachment inquiry, Nehls responded: ``All I can say is: Donald J. Trump 2024, baby!''

Video of the encounter was obtained exclusively by Rolling Stone. When reached for additional comment on Wednesday, Nehls said in a statement to Rolling Stone that Republicans ``will follow the rule of law and go where the facts lead us.''

Nehls is one of Trump's most ardent supporters in Congress, and even floated the former president as a potential House Speaker after Republicans booted Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the role in October. His comments are essentially an admission of what has long been obvious to many, which is that the GOP's fraught effort to dig up dirt on President Biden and his family is nothing more than a ham-fisted political stunt meant to hurt the president's reelection chances and place Trump back in the White House.

Republicans for months have been trotting out flimsy bits of evidence they say point to Biden's corruption. They've produced nothing substantial, however, nor have they been able to articulate exactly which high crimes and misdemeanors the president may have committed. Hunter Biden, the president's son whom Republicans believe worked with his father on illegal financial dealings, bashed the investigations while defying a GOP subpoena for closed-door testimony on Wednesday.

``I'm here today to make sure the House committee's illegitimate investigations of my family do not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence, and lies,'' he told reporters outside the Capitol. ``For six years MAGA Republicans including members of the House committees who are in a closed-door session right now, have imputed my character, invaded my privacy, attacked my wife, my children, my family, and my friends. They've ridiculed my struggle with addiction, they've belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father.''

Meanwhile, Trump is embroiled in a sea of criminal and civil legal trouble. Cases in Washington, D.C., and Georgia relate directly to his effort to undermine the results of the 2020 election and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He's also been indicted in New York over a hush- money scandal ahead of the 2016 election, and by the Justice Department in Florida over his handling of classified material after leaving the White House. A civil trial in New York, where Trump has already been found liable for using fraudulent financial statements for his business, is expected to wrap up this week.

Trump is also the clear frontrunner for the Republican 2024 nomination, and a showdown with Biden in the general election now seems inevitable. Republicans have tied themselves to Trump's erratic trajectory, and an impeachment inquiry in an election year is just the kind of circus they need to compete with the vortex of trials, depositions, and court appearances swirling around their all-but-official nominee.

The circus will continue with the vote on Wednesday to formalize their impeachment inquiry, the push to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress over his defiance of their subpoena, and a new round of Fox News appearances to try to legitimize the party's never-ending fishing expedition. Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-La.) won't be going on one of the network's most popular anytime soon. He said on Tuesday that he's boycotting Fox & Friends because one of its hosts keeps asking him questions he can't answer about what actual evidence the GOP has on Biden.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also avoided giving specifics in an op-ed announcing the vote to formalize the inquiry on Tuesday, writing--sincerely, absurdly--that ``impeachment is among the most solemn constitutional authorities the U.S. Congress holds, particularly when it comes to a president.''

If that's the public line Johnson wants House Republicans to use, he'd better get them some additional media training. At the very least, he should make sure they don't offer up the real reason for the inquiry as easily as Nehls did on Tuesday.

Mr. Speaker, this inquiry has nothing to do with Joe Biden. It is about the Republican Party and how radicalized and extreme they have become. They are allergic to truth and transparency.

Republicans say this is not about a preordained outcome. It is. They are going to try to impeach President Biden despite the fact that there is no evidence against him at all.

Trump sent a violent MAGA mob here to the Capitol to reverse the election results and certify that he won, even though he lost.

What they couldn't do on January 6 they want to do with this extreme political stunt. They have contempt for our democracy. They want to finish the job.

Republicans say this is all about process, about how the House will proceed. It is not. The truth is this process has already proceeded for 10 months. They have been investigating all year, obtaining tens of thousands of documents and hours and hours of witness testimony. All of it says there is no wrongdoing by President Biden.

Republicans say the White House is stonewalling their inquiry. Again, that is not true. The White House has provided over 35,000 pages of financial records, dozens of hours of testimony and interviews. Hunter Biden is here to testify today, and Republicans won't let him because they want to do it in secret so they can cherry-pick and distort his testimony.

This whole inquiry has nothing to do with the integrity of President Biden and everything to do with the lack of integrity in the Republican Party.

No amount of evidence could convince Republicans that Joe Biden did nothing wrong because they aren't looking for the truth. They are looking for revenge.

Mr. Speaker, I would just say directly to the American people, that the Republican Party works for Donald Trump; not for you, for Trump.

That is why they are pursuing this extreme political stunt. That is why they are doing everything in secret. They want to hide the truth from you because they know their whole impeachment inquiry is a sham, and it will evaporate into thin air when people realize what a pathetic joke it is.

This shameful process has no credibility. It has no legitimacy and no integrity.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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