With the decision to initiate an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) is hoping to turn what he says is already a strong impeachment case into one that’s “unassailable.”
Mr. Biggs spoke with NTD News’ “Capitol Report” on Thursday, after he and other Republicans held a closed-door meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to discuss the timetable and structure of the impeachment inquiry.
Since winning control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans have been actively investigating allegations that President Biden played a role in his family’s business dealings throughout his political career, enabling those family members to trade on his name and leverage his influence on their behalf. Those investigations have found evidence of millions of dollars flowing to various Biden family members and their business associates throughout President Biden’s political career, as well as evidence he interacted with his son Hunter Biden’s various business partners.
While many Republicans have argued that these investigations support their influence-peddling allegations, Biden White House officials and Democrat lawmakers have contended that the evidence uncovered so far does not prove a deliberate arrangement by President Biden to enrich himself or his family members through his office.
Mr. Biggs said the three congressional committees leading up the impeachment inquiry—the House Oversight, Ways and Means, and Judiciary committees—will each work within a specific niche of the impeachment inquiry, and will continue pursuing records requests as they have been in the month’s preceding the launch of the impeachment inquiry. While the announcement of an official impeachment inquiry marks a new phase in Republican investigations, Mr. Biggs said he doesn’t want the three committees to rush their work and anticipates efforts will be somewhat slow starting out.
“I know they want to push this through really fast, but I want to make sure that we have an unassailable case,” he said. “I think the case is pretty strong now. But I would be surprised if we get into anything within the next five weeks.”
While Mr. Biggs said the impeachment case is already “pretty strong,” Democrats have denounced the impeachment premise as “absurd” and argued that their Republican counterparts were acting out of political animus.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called the inquiry a “a political revenge tour that lacks any factual or constitutional basis.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said the impeachment inquiry is based on “MAGA-laced conspiracy theories.”
Inquiry Boosts Subpoena Power: Biggs
Some Republicans, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), have argued that an official impeachment inquiry gives Republican investigators stronger subpoena power than they did simply by holding the House majority. Mr. Biggs agreed with that assessment, saying he believes Republicans will indeed get “quicker and more fulsome” replies to various records they have been pursuing.
Thus far, Mr. Biggs said members of the Department of Justice and other executive branch agencies have slow-walked Republican records requests.
“Sometimes they’ve even denied documents until we’ve put them to the test, and then they’ve produced them,” he said. “So I think we actually get a little bit more power with impeachment inquiry status, and that will allow us to press forward at a more rapid pace than we’ve been able to go.”
Balancing Impeachment With Budget Battle
Mr. McCarthy’s decision to initiate the impeachment inquiry comes as Congress remains divided on the 2024 budget and could face a shutdown at the end of the month. The inquiry could add a new wrinkle to already contentious negotiations.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) expressly tied the budget debate to the issue of impeachment last month, stating she would not vote on a budget bill “unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden.”
Some Democrats have outright accused Mr. McCarthy of initiating the impeachment inquiry to shore up support among his Republican colleagues. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the impeachment inquiry “is all about Speaker McCarthy bowing down to a handful of extremists who will cost him his job if he doesn’t get just as wild and out there as they already are.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) also said the inquiry “is Kevin McCarthy’s shiny new object to distract the public from the fact that the GOP can’t even pass bills to fund the government.”
The budget debate is indeed multi-faceted. Mr. McCarthy has to contend with a Democrat-controlled Senate that has its own say on the budget deal, and still maintain the support of a narrow Republican House majority.
The staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus, of which Mr. Biggs is a member, has pressed for a budget deal that caps discretionary spending at $1.47 trillion for the year. The House Freedom Caucus has even indicated it would be willing to take no deal and accept a government shutdown rather than a deal that doesn’t include this discretionary spending cap.
This spring, the House Freedom Caucus pressed for similar spending reforms amid a showdown over the U.S. debt limit, but the eventual deal fell short of the spending limits sought by the conservative bloc. Congress may pass a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government and avoid a shutdown while the larger spending fight plays out, but the House Freedom Caucus has said it won’t support that move either unless the deal includes the Secure the Border Act of 2023, and addresses “the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI,” and “the left’s cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military’s core warfighting mission.”
Mr. Biggs told NTD News that these budget challenges could have been avoided if the House Speaker had done more to move the budget along on the House side.
“This should have been done at the end of June, so it could get over to the Senate. That was the idea, you get it done by the end of June, you get to the Senate, Senate has a month, month and a half to pass it out, make their adjustments, and then you go to conference committee, and then by the middle of September, you’re ready to vote on 12 appropriations bill, where everybody knows what’s in the bills,” Mr. Biggs told ‘Capitol Report’ on Thursday. “That’s not what they’re doing here.”
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), another Freedom Caucus member, said the impeachment inquiry is entirely unrelated to the budget debate and won’t in any way impact their demands on spending reform.
“Him starting the impeachment inquiry gives him no—zero—cushion, relief, grace, as it applies to [the] spending battle,” Mr. Good said.