Whatever you may think about the impeachments of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, they were at least impeached for things they verifiably did.
But Joe Biden may become the first president to be impeached entirely because of an unproven theory.
Republicans, and allies of Donald Trump in particular, have spent five years searching for the proof that will vindicate their long-held assertion that Joe Biden was corruptly in cahoots with his son, Hunter — being paid off by foreign interests and skewing US policy to support them.
Yet while much has emerged about Hunter’s sordid personal life and dubiously ethical behavior, Republicans have been unable to hang anything significant on his father.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who wrote this month: “What’s missing, despite years of investigation, is the smoking gun that connects Joe Biden to his ne’er-do-well son’s corruption.”
Of course, the GOP’s impeachment effort isn’t really about what the evidence shows — it’s political. What’s really behind this is that the hard right has been demanding aggressive action against Biden, Trump wants payback for his own two impeachments, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy is struggling to hold off threats to his speakership. The evidence is largely beside the point.
Still, some of Buck’s GOP colleagues assert that, actually, they’ve found a ton of damning information on Joe Biden — in their own investigation, and from the infamous abandoned “laptop” containing Hunter’s emails and messages, around which a sort of oppo research industrial complex has sprung up on the right.
But their grand corruption theories hinge either on uncorroborated or outright discredited accusations from questionable figures, or on Hunter throwing his father’s name around in private. The hard proof that Joe was in on Hunter’s schemes remains lacking.
What we know of Joe and Hunter Biden’s financial relationship
For nearly his entire adult life,…
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