Washington — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is expected to tell fellow House Republicans this week that he backs an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, two sources familiar with the speaker’s plan confirmed to CBS News.
McCarthy plans to say to his GOP colleagues that opening the impeachment inquiry into the president is the “logical next step” in the investigations into Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, that were launched by two committees after Republicans took control of the House in January.
The expected move comes as House Republicans are prepared to hold a closed-door meeting Thursday to provide an update on the probes from the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees into the president and his son.
Punchbowl News first reported McCarthy’s plan to support the inquiry.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Launching an impeachment inquiry is a significant escalation of Republicans’ investigations into Mr. Biden and Hunter Biden, which have yet to uncover direct evidence that the president profited off his son’s foreign business dealings. Mr. Biden has denied any involvement in his son’s foreign work, and the White House has said the president is not involved in Hunter Biden’s business activities.
It also is unclear whether there are 218 Republicans who would vote to approve the inquiry — McCarthy can only afford four defections from GOP lawmakers, and at least two, Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado and Don Bacon of Nebraska, have expressed skepticism toward pursuing an impeachment inquiry. There will also be one fewer Republican in the House GOP conference as of Friday, when Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah steps down because of his wife’s health concerns.
“There is not a strong connection at this point between the evidence on Hunter Biden and the evidence connecting the president,” Buck told MSNBC in an interview Sunday.
Bacon told reporters in July that he does not support opening an impeachment inquiry, but added that if after continued investigating, “we ever get to a threshold, or there’s more facts that seem clear, then you go to an inquiry.”
The decision to pursue an impeachment inquiry also comes as Congress is facing a Sept. 30 deadline to pass legislation to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. The far-right faction of the House GOP has been pushing McCarthy to cut government spending, and several have come out against any short-term measure to maintain government funding at existing levels while Congress works to pass individual spending bills.
In August, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers, said they would oppose any spending measure that doesn’t include a GOP-introduced plan to boost border security, fails to address alleged “unprecedented weaponization” of the Justice Department and the FBI and doesn’t roll back spending levels to those for 2022. The far-right group also said they oppose “any blank check for Ukraine.” The president asked Congress last month for more than $21 billion in emergency defense and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, a request Senate Republican leaders support.
In addition to their demands for a government spending plan, conservative lawmakers have been pushing McCarthy to stop resisting efforts to pursue an impeachment of Mr. Biden. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz warned in a social media post last week that the speaker could be forced from the job if he blocks action focused on impeachment.
Among the concessions McCarthy made to conservatives in order to secure enough support to win the speaker’s gavel in January was a rule that allows a single member to force a vote to oust the speaker. The threat of removal has been looming over McCarthy ever since.
The White House criticized Gaetz’s push for impeachment, saying his comments confirmed that far-right lawmakers are driving the focus on the president and his son.
“If Speaker McCarthy opens an impeachment inquiry simply to throw red meat to the right wing, it will yet again prove this is nothing more than a costly, illegitimate, politically-motivated exercise not rooted in reality,” Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said in a statement last week.
McCarthy’s expected endorsement of an impeachment inquiry comes after he has been signaling that the House’s GOP majority may take action. He told Fox News in an interview last month that an inquiry is a “natural step forward” and would give Congress “the apex of legal power to get all the information they need.”
Michael Kaplan contributed to this report
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