{"id":2254793,"date":"2024-05-29T07:13:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-29T11:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/son-of-a-gun-has-the-joe-biden-impeachment-effort-fizzled-out\/"},"modified":"2024-05-29T07:23:21","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T11:23:21","slug":"son-of-a-gun-has-the-joe-biden-impeachment-effort-fizzled-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/son-of-a-gun-has-the-joe-biden-impeachment-effort-fizzled-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Has the Joe Biden impeachment effort lost steam?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fson-of-a-gun-has-the-joe-biden-impeachment-effort-fizzled-out%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2254793&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The upcoming trial of Hunter Biden on gun charges coincides\u200d with the fading GOP campaign \u2063to \u200buncover his foreign financial activities. Although\u200b the momentum for impeaching President Joe Biden over family-related controversies\u2062 has waned, \u200dquestions \u200bpersist about the Justice Department&#8217;s treatment of Hunter Biden. This series by the Washington Examiner delves into the unfolding scenarios\u2064 ahead of Hunter Biden&#8217;s trial. House Republicans \u2062have \u200dintensively probed\u200d Joe Biden for impeachable conduct, focusing \u200con \u2063his son&#8217;s leveraging of political \u2062connections for personal gain. Despite substantial evidence linking\u2062 Hunter Biden&#8217;s dealings to Joe Biden, establishing direct culpability remains challenging for\u2063 GOP investigators. Key \u2064incidents such \u200bas\u2064 Joe Biden&#8217;s intervention in the \u2064dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor connected to Hunter&#8217;s business dealings raise concerns,\u200b yet tangible outcomes \u2064like an impeachment\u2063 vote seem uncertain.\u200d Noteworthy findings suggest Joe Biden&#8217;s \u200cawareness of\u200d his family&#8217;s\u200b actions, while counter evidence points to outside influences manipulating perceptions. The intricate web of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cbs-report-us-banks-flagged-more-than-150-biden-family-business-transactions-as-concerning\/\" title=\"CBS Report: US Banks \u2018Flagged\u2019 More Than 150 Biden Family Business Transactions As \u2018Concerning\u2019\">financial transactions involving<\/a> the Biden family poses\u200b a formidable challenge\u2062 for\u2062 substantiating claims of wrongdoing. Despite\u200b efforts by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to elucidate financial flows \u200dto the Biden family, proving direct financial gains by Joe Biden remains elusive. The impeachment inquiry, marked by partisan divides and contentious hearings,\u200d faces criticism for\u2063 its \u200clack of \u2062concrete charges against \u2064Joe Biden. Key players \u200bin the inquiry, such as Comer and\u200c notable Democrats, are embroiled in intense debates over the legitimacy \u2062and efficacy of\u2063 the investigation. The complexity of the financial dealings and the \u2064lack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/house-censures-democrat-who-pulled-fire-alarm-during-vote\/\" title=\"Democrat censured for pulling fire alarm during vote\">bipartisan support highlight<\/a> the challenges in substantiating claims of wrongdoing by the\u200d Bidens.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em><strong>Hunter Biden will stand trial next week on gun-related charges just as the GOP\u2019s effort to untangle his web of foreign moneymaking fizzles out. While the political will to impeach President Joe Biden over any involvement in his family\u2019s influence-peddling has all but disappeared, the belief that the Justice Department gave Hunter Biden favorable treatment has not. In this series, the <\/strong><\/em><strong>Washington Examiner<\/strong><em><strong>  will look at where the saga stands on the eve of his first trial. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/3017475\/son-of-a-gun-the-hunter-biden-cases-that-never-were\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Part one<\/a> looked at the cases against him that never materialized. Part two will look at how the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden is drawing to a close.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>House Republicans have dedicated enormous resources to investigating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/joe-biden\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Joe Biden\">Joe Biden<\/a> for impeachable offenses, but as his son Hunter prepares to defend himself in a criminal gun trial in less than one week, the president appears poised to avert his own trial before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/congress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Joe Biden\">Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Since Republicans took the majority, a trio of House committees have conducted numerous interviews and gathered thousands of documents showing Hunter Biden for years wielded Joe Biden\u2019s political influence for profit.<\/p>\n<p>However, implicating Joe Biden in his son\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/republicans-strategize-hunter-biden-probe-after-midterms-hes-a-national-security-threat\/\" title=\"Republicans Strategize Hunter Biden Probe After Midterms: 'He\u2019s a National Security Threat'\">business schemes<\/a> has been a less cut-and-dry process for GOP lawmakers. It has consisted of sometimes hostile witnesses and competing testimonies, and it has been bogged down by an elaborate web of foreign entities and financial records that even politically savvy legal observers find tedious.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry say their work is not over and that a final report containing criminal referrals and other recommendations is forthcoming. While there are unknowns about what is to come, there are also no signs that an impeachment vote, never mind a successful vote that results in a Senate trial, will come to fruition.<\/p>\n<h2>Bad findings for the Bidens<\/h2>\n<p>House Republicans were met time and again over the course of the past year with Biden-friendly witnesses who asserted at the start of their interviews that the president had no involvement in Hunter or his brother James Biden\u2019s business endeavors.<\/p>\n<p>However, bits of evidence have cropped up amid those denials that uncovered that Joe Biden had at least awareness of the fact that his family members were peddling the president\u2019s political influence to secure investment deals in China, Ukraine, and elsewhere abroad.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Biden, for instance, <a href=\"https:\/\/oversight.house.gov\/blog\/joe-biden-met-nearly-every-foreign-associate-funneling-his-family-millions%EF%BF%BC\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>met <\/a>with a Chinese executive with whom Hunter Biden was entering into a multimillion-dollar investment project. One of the first son\u2019s former associates, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden routinely hopped on the phone to greet his son\u2019s business partners. These mere winks and nods from Joe Biden granted him, as another former Biden business partner named Tony Bobulinski described it, \u201cplausible deniability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The impeachment inquiry has forced Joe Biden to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/2606309\/five-times-the-hunter-biden-influence-peddling-story-changed\/\">change<\/a> his story from unequivocal claims that he \u201cnever discussed\u201d business with his son to saying he was never \u201cin business\u201d with his son.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans have also zeroed in on one specific incident: Joe Biden using political pressure in 2015 to force the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who could have uncovered corruption within the energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden held a lucrative board position.<\/p>\n<p>One of the Republicans leading the impeachment inquiry, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), has hammered Joe Biden for this move countless times and told the <em>Washington Examiner<\/em> he wished more people grasped what transpired. He said one telltale sign of nefariousness on Joe Biden\u2019s part is that Shokin\u2019s predecessor and successor were both lenient on Burisma, while Shokin was not.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe one guy who\u2019s actually investigating Burisma is the one person Joe Biden says has to be fired, or you\u2019re not getting the loan guarantee money, even though our State Department, just a few months before, complimented that very prosecutor,\u201d Jordan said. \u201cSo that fact I don\u2019t think has sunk in with the country. \u2026 I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s sunk in with people who are looking at all this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joe Biden\u2019s speech as vice president during which he called for Shokin\u2019s firing came days after Hunter Biden and Burisma executives called \u201cD.C.\u201d together to speak about the matter, according to Archer\u2019s testimony. It is unclear if \u201cD.C.\u201d was a reference to Joe Biden, another Obama administration official, or someone else.<\/p>\n<p>Archer also testified that the executives constantly pressured Hunter Biden to get help from \u201cD.C.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joe Biden using political influence to help his son profit in a country in which his father was spearheading anti-corruption efforts would be a damning revelation.<\/p>\n<p>However, some evidence has also worked in Joe Biden\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n<p>For example, a State Department official who largely led the anti-corruption work in Ukraine <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/house\/2928303\/gop-threatens-subpoena-biden-official-ukraine\/\">told<\/a> Congress there was no feasible way in which Joe Biden could have acted in response to his son. Moreover, he claimed Russians were attempting to \u201csow disinformation among Ukrainians\u201d \u00a0by using Hunter Biden\u2019s name.<\/p>\n<p>The official, Amos Hochstein, said that Joe Biden pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin was a \u201ccoordinated, multi-stakeholder effort\u201d that Hochstein was part of that had nothing to do with Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n<h2>Comer comes up short<\/h2>\n<p>From the outset of the inquiry, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who has been at the helm of the investigation, has faced the challenge of presenting complex flow charts to the public to illustrate how millions of dollars flowed from foreign entities to the Biden family.<\/p>\n<p>While he has thoroughly conveyed that Hunter and James Biden received money, including through shady exchanges and empty promises, pinpointing where Joe Biden may have personally received money through these deals has been a dead end. The disappointment for Republicans was compounded earlier this year when a claim found on an FBI form that Joe Biden accepted a massive bribe turned out to have originated from an informant who allegedly lied to the bureau to hurt the president\u2019s 2020 campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Further bruising Comer\u2019s image is the highly partisan nature of the inquiry. No Democrat has shown support for it, and Democrats on his committee have routinely blasted him during public hearings for what they see as wasting time.<\/p>\n<p>At a recent hearing in April, ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), perhaps Democrats\u2019 most skilled lawyer in Congress, attacked Comer for dragging out the inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have not identified a single crime. What is the crime that you want to impeach Joe Biden for and keep this nonsense going?\u201d Raskin asked.<\/p>\n<p>Republican sources familiar with the impeachment inquiry described Comer as \u201cchecked out\u201d of it. That notion is bolstered by his committee spiraling out of control at a recent impeachment-related hearing. The event, which Raskin later described as a \u201cradical breach of decorum,\u201d devolved into a chaotic display of lawmakers exchanging insults about perceived \u201cbutch\u201d bodies and false eyelashes.<\/p>\n<p>Hans von Spakovsky, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senator-josh-hawleys-wife-describes-frightening-evening-of-assault-on-family-home\/\" title=\"Senator Josh Hawley\u2019s Wife Describes \u201cFrightening\u201d Evening Of \u201cAssault\u201d On Family Home\">senior legal fellow<\/a> at the conservative Heritage Foundation, does not blame Comer for the lackluster optics surrounding the inquiry. Von Spakovsky told the <em>Washington Examiner <\/em>that Comer\u2019s burden to prove impeachable offenses was always heavy and that confusion about the financial aspect was by design.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow many shell companies did they put up? Twenty different shell companies to hide the income they were getting abroad, to launder it between all these different companies?\u201d von Spakovsky said. \u201c[The Bidens] engaged in an intentional effort to obscure what they were doing. The money they were receiving, how much, who they were getting from, and to try to present that in simple terms that everyone can understand is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Von Spakovsky added that he would like to wait for the final impeachment report to come out before he makes a judgment call on whether the president committed an impeachable offense, such as abuse of power.<\/p>\n<h2>Inquiry nears its end<\/h2>\n<p>Comer is not planning any future impeachment hearings, and, despite Hunter Biden rejecting an invitation to appear at a public Oversight hearing, the chairman does not plan to compel his appearance, according to one Republican source familiar with the inquiry.<\/p>\n<p>While Comer has drawn a fair amount of criticism, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2024\/04\/24\/politics\/house-gop-biden-impeachment-effort\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>including<\/a> from his own party members, for coming up short, the chairman\u2019s committee projected a sense of accomplishment in a statement to the <em>Washington Examiner.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>An Oversight Committee spokesman said Republicans had \u201cunearthed an overwhelming record of evidence revealing Joe Biden knew of, participated in, and benefited from his family\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-walls-are-closing-in-on-the-biden-family-scheme\/\" title=\"The Walls Are Closing in on the Biden Family Scheme\">influence-peddling schemes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The spokesman said the committee also just obtained a wealth of new documents from the former Biden business partner Archer and that more bank records were on the horizon.<\/p>\n<p>The spokesman also asserted that the committee would outline its findings in its forthcoming final report \u201cwith recommendations and criminal referrals soon,\u201d but he did not specify a time frame beyond that.<\/p>\n<p>Jordan, whose committee is currently engaged in writing the report, said the committee trio plans to give the report to leadership and the Republican conference once it is ready.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER\">CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd we\u2019ll see what the conference wants to do,\u201d Jordan said, adding that \u201ceverything\u2019s on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll just continue to do our work, and then we\u2019ll let the conference make a decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hunter Biden faces trial on gun charges next week as the GOP&#8217;s scrutiny of his foreign dealings fades. The push to impeach President Joe Biden over family ties wanes, with questions lingering about favored treatment by the Justice Department<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":2254794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/AP23270818056365.jpg.optimal.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2254793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/AP23270818056365.jpg.optimal.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2254793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2254794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2254793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2254793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2254793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}