While a majority of Democrats do not want him to be their nominee in 2024, President Joe Biden is the subject of an impeachment inquiry over his involvement in an alleged international bribery scheme.
Simultaneously, Hunter Biden faces three federal criminal charges and up to 25 years in prison.
At 80, Biden holds the record for the oldest-serving president in U.S. history. Should he win a second term in 2024, he would be 82 at the start of it and 86 at the end.
House Republicans on Thursday launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, alleging that he used his position as vice president to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating a company that employed his son, Hunter Biden.
The inquiry is led by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Comer said that the committee has uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that Biden abused his power for his family’s financial gain.
“President Biden has betrayed the trust of the American people,” Comer said in a statement. “He used his position of power to enrich his family at the expense of our national security. He must be held accountable for his actions.”
The impeachment inquiry is a major escalation of the Republican Party’s attacks on Biden. Republicans have long accused Biden and his son of corruption, but they have never been able to provide any concrete evidence to support their claims.
The impeachment inquiry is also a major test for Biden’s presidency. Biden is already facing low approval ratings and a number of challenges, including the war in Ukraine and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. An impeachment trial would further damage Biden’s presidency and could make it difficult for him to govern effectively.
Democrats are divided on the impeachment inquiry. Some Democrats support the inquiry, arguing that it is necessary to hold Biden accountable for his alleged wrongdoing. Others oppose the inquiry, arguing that it is a partisan witch hunt that will further divide the country.
A majority of Democrats do not want Biden to be their nominee in 2024. However, there is no consensus on who should replace him.
A number of poll results come amid growing concerns among Democrats about Biden’s age and his ability to handle a second term in office. Biden is currently 79 years old, and he would be 82 years old if he were to win re-election in 2024.
In addition, Biden has faced a number of challenges during his presidency, including the war in Ukraine, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and high inflation. His approval ratings have been consistently low, and he has trailed former President Donald Trump in head-to-head polls.
The poll results also show that Democrats are divided on who they would like to see replace Biden as the party’s nominee in 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris is the most obvious choice among Democrats, but she is also facing low approval ratings.
It is unclear whether Biden has a way to back off from his run for re-election in 2024 but he faces significant challenges if he were to remain in the race.
The poll results suggest that Democrats are looking to the future and are considering other options for the party’s nominee in 2024. Biden has been a popular figure in the Democratic Party for decades, but his age and his recent struggles have led some Democrats to question whether he is the right person to lead the party into the future.
The Democratic Party is facing a number of challenges, including a divided electorate and a Republican Party that is energized and motivated. In order to win in 2024, Democrats will need to find a candidate who can unite the party and inspire voters.
The impeachment inquiry is likely to drag on for several months. If the House votes to impeach Biden, he would be tried by the Senate. A conviction would require a two-thirds majority vote, which is unlikely given that the Senate is currently controlled by Democrats.
International Bribery Scheme
The alleged international bribery scheme that Biden is being investigated for involves a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden was a member of Burisma’s board of directors while his father was vice president.
In 2016, then-Vice President Biden pressured Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, the country’s prosecutor general. Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Biden’s supporters say that he was fired because he was corrupt.
However, critics say that Biden pressured Shokin to be fired because he wanted to protect his son from being investigated.
The impeachment inquiry is expected to focus on Biden’s role in the firing of Shokin. Comer has said that the committee has evidence that Biden threatened to withhold financial aid from Ukraine if Shokin was not fired.
The impeachment inquiry is also expected to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. Comer has said that the committee has evidence that Hunter Biden profited from his position on Burisma’s board of directors.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announced the start of an impeachment inquiry into allegations that President Biden committed public corruption with his involvement in his son Hunter’s sketchy business dealings has opened the president’s family to well-deserved scrutiny.
Perhaps more importantly, the investigation is already exposing a White House desperate to use its authority to manipulate the public conversation.
Republican investigators have produced evidence suggesting the Biden family has raked in millions that foreign entities poured into dozens of shell companies Hunter Biden established while his father was vice president. Initiating an impeachment inquiry,
McCarthy said, is the “logical next step” in unraveling the Bidens’ fishy finances. More than 150 bank-generated suspicious activity reports constitute a maze of transactions obscuring their overseas origins.
A CNN survey found 61% of Americans believe the President was involved in his son’s dubious ventures in China and Ukraine while only 38% disagree, and 1% reckon he was involved, but not in an illegal way.
The waning public support appears to have triggered the White House to retaliate against Republicans. Ian Sams, a special assistant to the president, crafted a letter Tuesday to major news organizations, urging them to turn the tables on the backers of the Biden investigation.
“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Sams wrote. Recipients of the letter reportedly included The New York Times, The Associated Press, Fox News and CNN.
The missive follows another foolish foray into media manipulation, in which administration officials pressured social media companies to censor speech on their platforms regarding such contentious issues as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. A federal appeals court ruled in July that these actions likely violated the Constitution’s First Amendment.
If the comparison is inexact, the intent of both schemes is the same: to strong-arm journalists into advocating the White House narrative and spiking competing views, regardless of the facts.
So many in the media have become comfortable with a role promoting a “Biden good, Trump bad” narrative that Sams might have wasted some perfectly good ink.
MSNBC columnist Dean Obeidallah, for one, has called former President Donald Trump “the Bin Laden of the 1/6 MAGA terrorist attack,” and to save democracy, Trump “must die in jail.”
With an equal measure of delusion, the Justice Department has criminalized Trump’s right to free speech by charging him with knowingly spreading lies when he rallied Americans to stand against ballot fraud that he believed had tainted the 2020 presidential election.
Journalists recoil at any suggestion that they become players in an impeachment inquiry beyond reporting the facts but instead many have allowed personal animus toward Trump to cloud their view of their role in the public discourse, and the American people have noticed.
Gallup polling has shown trust in the media plummeting from a peak of 72% in the 1970s to a dismal 34% today.
The White House gambit exposes a lack of confidence, and those in the media would be foolish to discard their professional obligation to join the losing team.