The 80-year-old Democrat Joe Biden has so far remained silent about the impeachment inquiry.
Washington:
The White House on Wednesday dismissed “baseless” allegations of misconduct against US President Joe Biden after Republican lawmakers launched an impeachment inquiry against him.
While the 80-year-old Democrat remained silent when reporters asked him about the investigation, his spokeswoman pushed back against the investigation of his political enemies.
“They’ve been investigating the president all year… and have come up with no evidence that he did anything wrong,” Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
“That’s because the president has done nothing wrong.”
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy bowed to intense pressure from the far right in his party and authorized the launch of an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday.
Republican House members are accusing Biden, a Democrat, of “lying” to the American people about his son Hunter’s controversial business dealings abroad.
But Jean-Pierre said Republicans did not even have enough support for a vote in the House of Representatives to authorize an impeachment inquiry.
“Even Republicans in the House of Representatives have said the evidence doesn’t exist,” she said. “This is a political stunt.”
The survey comes as Biden faces low ratings ahead of a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election.
Biden ignored impeachment questions from reporters at the White House as he led a meeting of his “Cancer Cabinet” that aims to eradicate the disease, part of a recent administration effort to put the focus back on its domestic agenda.
– ‘Good things’ –
Cancer is personal for Biden, whose eldest son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46. Biden had a cancerous skin lesion removed in February, while doctors removed two from First Lady Jill Biden a month earlier.
Biden has stood firmly behind his only surviving son, Hunter, 53.
The younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president under Barack Obama have been a constant target of Republicans.
Hunter Biden, a recovering drug addict, is currently under investigation by a Justice Department special counsel for possible tax evasion and is expected to be indicted on firearms violations at the end of this month.
However, he has not been charged with any crimes related to his foreign business dealings, and no credible evidence has emerged yet that the president was involved in anything illegal.
However, the investigation threatens to distract the White House and give Republicans new material for attacks ahead of the November 2024 elections.
Biden has a slim one percent lead over Trump — 47 percent to 46 — in a hypothetical matchup, according to a new national poll from Quinnipiac University.
Half of voters thought Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business dealings with China and Ukraine, while 35 percent thought the president did something illegal, the poll found.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
