House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Nov. 2 that he expects the House will soon make a decision on whether to file articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.
“As we stand here today, I’m not predetermined on that," Mr. Johnson said, when asked at a press conference if he thought evidence that had been collected would support such a move. "But I do believe that very soon, we are coming to a point of decision on it.”
The newly elected speaker stressed that the scope and timeline of the investigation should be based on the evidence rather than a partisan political agenda—an approach that he said differed from that taken by Democrats in their impeachments of former President Donald Trump.
“What you’re seeing right now is a deliberate, constitutional process that was envisioned by the founders, the framers of the Constitution,” he said. “This is how they envisioned this to go, not the way the Democrats did it—snap impeachment, sham impeachments, and all the rest.”
Mr. Johnson, a constitutional law attorney, served on both of President Trump’s impeachment defense teams in the House.
Describing impeachment as arguably “the heaviest power” that the House possesses, he emphasized that it shouldn't be wielded as a political tool.
“We have to follow the process and we have to follow the law,” he said. “That means following our obligation under the Constitution and doing appropriate investigations in the right way, at the right pace, so that the evidence comes in and we follow the evidence.
“We’re going to follow the truth where it leads.”
The speaker praised House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) for their investigative leadership, contending that they had done “an extraordinary job, very methodically,” and “outside the scope of politics.”
The Evidence
While Mr. Johnson has only been House speaker for a little more than a week, he’s presided over a flurry of activity as the chamber gets back to business.
One aspect of that business is the chamber's continuance of its impeachment inquiry, which House Republicans opened on Sept. 12 amid allegations that President Biden was involved in a pay-to-play bribery scheme.
In the past week, Mr. Comer and his committee have uncovered two direct payments that President Biden received from his brother that they claim implicate him in an influence-peddling operation.
The first payment the panel discovered was a $200,000 check that the president received on March 1, 2018. The check, labeled as “loan repayment,” was written on the same day that James Biden, President Biden's brother, received a $200,000 wire from Americore Health, a rural hospital operator.
According to court documents, Americore loaned James Biden $600,000 “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”
President Biden, who has repeatedly denied any involvement in his family members’ business affairs, has said that the $200,000 check was repayment for a personal loan.
The second payment, revealed by the committee on Oct. 31, was another “loan repayment” of $40,000 that President Biden received on Sept. 23, 2017.
According to a memo compiled by the committee, bank records and other documents suggest that the funds for that payment may have been sourced from a Chinese firm and funneled through multiple companies and accounts controlled by Biden family members.
Mr. Comer, who accused the president of receiving "laundered China money," qualified the allegation by noting that it's plausible that the $40,000 from James Biden was indeed a loan repayment, as noted in the memo section of the personal check.
"But even if this $40,000 check was a loan repayment from James Biden, it still shows how Joe benefited from his family cashing in on his name—with money from China no less," Mr. Comer said.
The White House didn't return a request for comment on the $40,000 payment.
Investigation Continues
Notably, neither payment was made when President Biden held elected office, and the committee’s bank memo didn't establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the money that he received was from China.
But in a Nov. 1 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Mr. Comer said that the information that his committee had gathered was “evidence that Joe Biden himself benefited” from his family members’ foreign business dealings.
Mr. Johnson, who also took part in the interview, repeated that the House is “following the truth where it leads.”
“You hear the evidence, you hear this laid out and summarized—of course, you know there’s much more than what we’re able to do in one segment,” he said. “[But] we’re going to follow the truth where it leads because we have a constitutional responsibility to do so.”
Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.
