In a lengthy report released on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, Republicans used circumstantial evidence to accuse the president of corruption tied to his son’s foreign business dealings.
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President Biden on Friday in Maryland. The Bidens and several of their business associates have repeatedly denied that Mr. Biden was involved in his son’s businesses, despite the efforts of some business partners to cut him into deals after he left the vice presidency.
House Republicans on Monday formally made the case for impeaching President Biden, releasing a lengthy report accusing him of corruption and seeking to allow his family to profit off his office in connection with foreign business deals made by his son Hunter, who has been charged with felony tax crimes.
In the 291-page document, released on the day that Democrats gather in Chicago to begin their party convention, Republicans call Mr. Biden’s conduct “egregious” and say he should be impeached for abuse of power and obstruction. But the report contains no proof that Mr. Biden, when he was vice president, engaged in any corrupt quid pro quo to benefit his son’s business partners, and Republicans admit they have no direct evidence that he ordered any interference into a Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden.
“An abuse of power may also be present even if, as some claim, the Biden family was only selling the ‘illusion’ of influence and access,” the report says, adding: “It is not necessary for the House of Representatives to show that the dealings involved a quid pro quo to rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”
The Bidens and several of their business associates have repeatedly denied that Mr. Biden was involved in his son’s businesses, despite the efforts of some business partners to cut him into deals after he left the vice presidency.
“I did not involve my father in my business, not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions, domestic or international, not as a board member and not as an artist, never,” Hunter Biden said in the opening statement of his deposition to the committees in February.
Still, Republicans assert that they do not need to prove that Mr. Biden personally profited from his son’s business deals, accepted a bribe or otherwise committed a crime because, they argue in part, Democrats lowered the threshold for impeachment with their pursuit of President Donald J. Trump in 2019.
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