The push by Republicans in the House of Representatives to impeach Joe Biden this year isn’t going anywhere. So they have their sights set on another goal: helping Donald Trump target Biden if he wins back the White House.
The impeachment process is stalled due to intraparty skepticism, and the Republicans’ primary backup plan – criminal referrals to the Justice Department, including for Hunter Biden and possibly even Joe Biden – is also unlikely to amount to anything if the latter is in power is.
Against that backdrop, Republicans are outlining a growing wish list that they hope Trump’s administration will fulfill when he returns to power next year, regardless of which party controls Congress. Those goals include helping Republican lawmakers obtain the audio of Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur; reforming the DOJ and FBI into a more conservative form; and continuing further investigations arising from Republicans’ expansive impeachment inquiry, even now that Joe Biden is no longer in office.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said he expects no action from the DOJ this year on the party’s Biden-related criminal referrals. But he looks forward to Trump taking up the White House’s cause.
“Next year. Under this administration, that won’t happen,” Norman said. He succinctly summarized the prospects of federal prosecutions resulting from GOP criminal referrals: “Under Trump? Yes. But not under this administration.”
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (RN.D.) pointed to the Biden White House’s claim that he had executive privilege to prevent the release of the audio of the president’s interview with Hur, which House Republicans of Representatives to file contemptuous findings against Attorney General Merrick Garland, who provided the transcript.
“Under a Trump presidency,” Armstrong predicted, “there will be a lawsuit about that.”
Republican lawmakers have plenty of evidence to suggest that even with Joe Biden out of office, Trump would still want the DOJ to focus on retaliation against his defeated enemy or his current accusers — especially after his conviction last week on 34 felonies for falsifying company records related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The former president has repeatedly promised just that in social media posts, publicly warning last year that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into him would result in “consequences far greater than anything Biden or his thugs could understand,” before he added, “This is a Pandora thing. A box works both ways, and it must be closed and properly sealed RIGHT NOW.’
Some of the Republican Party’s top lawmakers are even preoccupied with the specific Biden investigative findings they want to highlight for a possible Trump presidency, even as some Republican colleagues acknowledge they still don’t have any evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Joe Biden. (Hunter Biden, for his part, is in court this week for a trial on federal gun charges and will face a second tax-related trial later this year.)
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), who wrote in a fundraising email earlier this year that Republicans would “provide new leadership at the DOJ … whatever they need” for prosecutions, doubled down on that plan in an interview by promising to include material from a recent Hunter Biden-related document dump from the Way and Means Committee, which received information from IRS whistleblowers.
The criminal referrals that Republicans plan to send to DOJ “won’t expire this year,” Comer said, adding that if the Biden DOJ doesn’t “try to enforce the law … maybe the next one will.”
Republican pollsters’ increased focus on a possible Trump victory comes as a growing number of their colleagues acknowledge they don’t have the votes to impeach Biden this year. They are preparing to recommend that Garland be held in contempt next week after the DOJ turns over the Hur-Biden transcript but not the audio, but GOP support has not yet been blocked from even that move.
Even if they manage to deliver a political blow to Garland, who is all but guaranteed not to face criminal charges, Republicans remain in the dark about when and how the larger Biden investigation will play out.
‘It’s this glacier we’re sitting on. People like to stop and make ice cubes sometimes, but it’s still a little slow,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said of the state of the research.
Despite that largely frozen impeachment, Republicans are quietly conducting a multi-pronged investigation into Biden and his family behind the scenes. Comer recently announced that he had issued a new subpoena for banking records and said in an interview that he is sifting through a series of documents provided by former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, all of which will shape an upcoming report on the research.
Comer has also insisted that impeachment is still on the table. And on the Judiciary Committee, two Republicans said they still expected the panel to hold hearings on articles of impeachment once the Oversight panel released its findings. Asked about it, Jordan said: “Everything is on the table.”
He also said investigators would publicly release a “package of materials” about their findings from the Biden administration — which could serve as fodder for a future Trump administration. The judicial panel is still embroiled in a lawsuit over the closed-door testimony of two DOJ tax attorneys involved in Hunter Biden’s yearlong federal investigation.
But underscoring the political pitfalls facing Republicans, Comer is facing early pushback from the White House over ethics legislation he released with Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) that would require presidents to release their tax returns — something which Trump refused to do – and there are more rules on financial disclosure of family members.
This bipartisan bill has an unclear path forward after receiving early resistance from some corners of the House Democratic caucus and skepticism from the White House.
“It applies to Trump the same way,” Comer said of the bill. “I think it would be difficult to explain to the American people why you wouldn’t support it.”
While Comer individually touts his future references to criminals as possible breadcrumbs for a Trump return to office, he is getting some support from the right flank of the conference that has quixoticly pushed for impeachment this year.
For example, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) has said the Republican Party should notify lawmakers even if a vote on Joe Biden’s impeachment fails. He separately expressed hope that, “while we probably don’t have the votes for impeachment,” any criminal referrals arising from the investigation “would still be available for re-examination.” [attorney general].”
Trump allies on Capitol Hill have especially leaned on Jordan to use his congressional position to investigate the Trump investigators, arguing that his work could be used as a basis for renewed investigation in 2025. And Jordan took new steps that front after Trump’s crime in New York. convictions, urging testimony from top prosecutors.
But when it comes to Biden’s impeachment inquiry, Republicans in the House of Representatives continue to face a steady stream of criticism from Fox News and other conservative media over their failure to deliver on a big promise to the party base. Even some members of the right flank of the House of Representatives have publicly stated that they believe parliament should have acted more quickly and aggressively.
Jordan said in a brief interview that he was “confident” that a Trump administration would be more willing to reexamine some of the GOP’s biggest sore points or hand over the information Republicans are seeking goods. Providing information about which a previous president claimed executive privilege while in office would be a historic step, but Democrats acknowledge it is a possibility.
House Republicans have also hinted they would sue the Biden administration this year over the Hur-Biden audio, but the ensuing legal battle could drag on for months.
Jordan also predicted that Trump would reshape the DOJ, which Republicans have increasingly soured on since Trump first took office in 2016. The right flank of the House of Representatives, the Republican Party, wanted to review the DOJ and FBI more quickly this Congress, but those proposals have stalled amid opposition from the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House — and resistance from some Republican colleagues about endangering the independence of the agencies.
Republicans plan to use the upcoming debate over government funding to focus on Smith’s investigation and that of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, but face the same hurdles.
“I think a Trump administration means a change in these agencies. … That’s a big part of it,” Jordan said.
