Biden impeachment inquiry: Everything we know ahead of first hearing today

House Republicans will hold their first impeachment inquiry hearing against President Joe Biden on Thursday morning, just days before the deadline to fund the government for the coming fiscal year is set to expire.

The hearing itself will be livestreamed, beginning at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time, and will be led by House Committee on Oversight and Government Accountability James Comer (R-KY). Here’s what you need to know.

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The evidence

Comer previously told reporters that, while Thursday’s hearing won’t specifically present new evidence, the committee will outline the “crimes the Bidens may have committed.”

“Based on the evidence, Congress has a duty to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s corruption,” he said in a statement. Americans demand and deserve answers, transparency, and accountability for this abuse of public office.”

Republicans on Oversight, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Ways and Means have spent the better part of the last year investigating Biden’s family, with a heavy focus on the business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

The bulk of Republican’s findings have not received widespread media coverage, and Republicans on Thursday plan to publicly present “emails, text messages, bank records, and testimony of Biden business associates.”

The witnesses

Republicans have called the following three expert witnesses to testify on Thursday:

• Bruce Dubinsky, forensic accountant and founder of Dubinsky Consulting, has served as an expert witness more than a hundred times and specializes in criminal and financial fraud.
• Eileen O’Connor, who was the former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s tax division during the Bush administration.
• Jonathan Turley, a well-known legal scholar and the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at the George Washington University.

Oversight Democrats also called Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina, to testify. Gerhardt has been openly critical of the GOP impeachment push based on the lack of “credible” evidence outlining a crime by the president. He previously referred to the hearing as a “fishing expedition.”

The allegations

Expect GOP lawmakers to zero in on Biden’s time as vice president, where they claim Hunter Biden used his family’s name to sell access to the Obama administration.

Republicans also claim that, as vice president, Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings and even used his office to sweeten deals brokered by Hunter. The president has repeatedly denied, both on the campaign trail and in the White House, that he had any knowledge of Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has previously claimed that Republicans had uncovered more than 150 transactions between Biden family members and their business associates.

Republicans will also rely heavily on past testimony from IRS whistleblowers alleging that the Biden administration stonewalled investigations into Hunter Biden’s business dealings, potentially shielding him from heavier charges.

Biden’s response

Biden himself likely won’t say much, if anything at all, in response to the hearing. He’ll spend Thursday delivering a campaign speech in Arizona on protecting Democracy at home, and defending it abroad.

However, White House officials have been working overtime to counter the GOP’s claims ahead of Thursday’s hearing.

The White House has criticized Comer and Republicans for holding a “baseless” hearing that is meant to distract from McCarthy’s failure to produce a continuing resolution backed by the full GOP caucus ahead of the government shutdown deadline at month’s end.

Furthermore, the White House sent a memo to interested parties on Wednesday that claims to fully rebut seven allegations put forth of alleged Biden family crimes.

“Speaker McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Comer, and other House Republicans have shown that they are pursuing a baseless impeachment stunt — despite revealing no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden — in a relentless effort to smear the President,” the memo reads. “The relentless pursuit of this extreme, far-right political agenda comes at the expense of what the American people have sent their leaders to Washington to do — move past the constant political warfare and focus on working together to improve the lives of American families.”

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You can watch the entire hearing below.