House Republicans authorize impeachment inquiry into Biden, escalating battle ahead of election year

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to formally authorize an ongoing impeachment inquiry into Democratic President Joe Biden, escalating the battle between the White House and Republicans ahead of election year.

Analysts said that the political struggle between and within the two parties has become increasingly fierce, and in the past year, the United States has repeatedly seen unprecedented events.

As the election year approaches, the impeachment inquiry into Biden is bound to have a major impact on the election, and the political polarization in the country could become more prominent.

POLITICAL STUNT?

U.S. House Republicans on Wednesday voted, 221 against 212 along party lines, to authorize an impeachment inquiry into Biden, the latest sign of rampant partisanship in Congress.

The White House and Democrats said Republicans had found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden and that the vote was a "political stunt." Biden issued a statement saying House Republicans were "focused on attacking" him with lies. Democrats also accused Republicans of acting to avenge the impeachment against former President Donald Trump.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, defended the vote, arguing that it is "not a political decision," noting that Republicans are committed to the "rule of law."

The formal authorization comes after months of investigations by House Republicans into the business dealings of members of the Biden family, in an attempt to find out whether the president improperly profited from his son's overseas business dealings.

So far, ethical concerns have been raised by Republicans, but no substantiated evidence has surfaced to demonstrate that Biden, in his current or past official capacities, engaged in the misuse of his position or accepted illicit payments.

House Republicans hope that the vote on an impeachment inquiry would give them better legal standing to enforce subpoenas and bring in witnesses to testify. Republicans had asked Biden's son, Hunter Biden, to testify behind closed doors, but he refused, offering to testify in a public hearing to ensure fairness.

A FACTOR IN ELECTION

Under the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives has the power to impeach federal officials, including the president and vice president. An impeachment inquiry is usually conducted by House committees, and investigators draft and propose articles of impeachment after the investigation is completed.

If more than half of the members of the House vote in favor of at least one article of impeachment, the person under investigation is impeached. The impeachment case then goes to the Senate for trial, and if more than two-thirds of the senators vote in favor of the articles of impeachment, the impeached person is convicted and removed from office, otherwise he will remain in office.

The U.S. Senate is narrowly controlled by the Democrats, thus Biden is unlikely to be convicted, even if impeached. However, with less than a year to go before the 2024 presidential election, the impeachment case against Biden could become a major point of contention between the two parties and have an impact on the election.

On the Republican side, the race has been dominated by Trump, who has actually been bolstered among his voting base by the four criminal indictments he faces, prompting several other candidates to drop out of the race.

Trump was impeached twice by the House - then controlled by Democrats - before being acquitted by the Senate. Trump has been calling for retaliation, urging his Republican allies in Congress to move quickly to impeach Biden.

Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua that he expects the impeachment inquiry to become a factor in the 2024 presidential election.

"Its primary value is to devalue the efforts to impeach Trump that failed and to create an atmosphere of 'everybody does it.' It debases the currency of this element of the U.S. Constitution," Ramsay said. "That makes it easier for some to vote for Trump, if they're not already there."

A YEAR OF CHAOS

The impeachment inquiry vote is the latest evidence of heightened partisanship in U.S. politics. In the past year, the country has witnessed one political farce after another, with the two parties attacking each other on issues such as the debt ceiling and government funding.

Hunter Biden, who faces gun and tax-related charges, became the first child of a sitting president to be criminally indicted. Trump is facing multiple charges, becoming the first former president to be criminally indicted in U.S. history.

In U.S. Congress, chaos has become the new normal. In January, for the first time in 100 years, the speaker of the House of Representatives was not elected on the first vote. Kevin McCarthy won the position in a dramatic 15-round floor fight, amid Republican Party infighting.

Just nine months later, amid growing disagreement between moderates and conservatives, McCarthy suffered the "betrayal" of eight Republican colleagues on Oct. 3, making him the first sitting House speaker to be voted out of office in U.S. history.

After McCarthy was ousted, three Republican nominees failed to garner enough Republican votes needed to reach the majority threshold, leaving the House leaderless for three weeks. Johnson, vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, was elected the new House speaker in the fourth round of voting.

"As polls have rather consistently portrayed in the last couple of years, the general sentiment of U.S. citizens seems to be, at best, sour," Greg Cusack, a former member of the Iowa House of Representatives, told Xinhua.

"And confidence in government has been rather rock-bottom for some time now," Cusack said.

Echoing his view, Ramsay told Xinhua that public confidence in the government has been flat at a low level since about a decade ago.

A small portion of Americans trust the government to do what is right most of the time, he said.

(Matthew Rusling contributed to the report)