The White House on Tuesday ripped Speaker Kevin McCarthy for ‘flip-flopping’ on his impeachment stance and insisted House Republicans have no evidence of wrong doing on President Joe Biden after nine months of investigations.

‘House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing,’ White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations Ian Sams said in a statement.

‘His own Republican members have said so. He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn’t have support. This is extreme politics at its worst,’ Sams added of McCarthy.

The speaker on Tuesday stunned Washington when he officially opened an impeachment inquiry into Biden in a shock statement accusing the president of an ‘abuse of power and being involved in a ‘culture of corruption’ over son Hunter’s foreign business deals. 

Biden has an impeachment war room set up at the White House, filled with dozens of lawyers and aides to help him battle House Republicans. The war room is based in the White House counsel’s office and staffed by lawyers, legislative aides and communications staffers who will act aggressively against Republicans’ investigations. Sams is part of that effort.

And Biden’s presidential campaign called the impeachment inquiry ‘baseless’ and accused McCarthy of giving into demands to Donald Trump. Trump has pushed his allies on Capitol Hill to investigate Biden as he was investigated by Democrats.

The Biden campaigned described McCarthy’s move as election-year politics.  

‘As Donald Trump ramped up his demands for a baseless impeachment inquiry, Kevin McCarthy cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign,’ Ammar Moussa, spokesperson for Biden-Harris 2024, said in a statement.

Some Biden allies have argued the impeachment proceeding could help the president as he heads into next year’s presidential contest, firing up Democratic and swing voters in Biden’s favor.

Trump successfully used his impeachments to rally his base and raise millions for his political fundraising committees. 

And some Senate Republicans have the same concer, that the impeachment could backfire against them and give Biden a boost in the 2024 election, CNN reported. 

They’re also worried it could distract voters from their effort to blame Biden on rising inflation and the troubled economy. 

But McCarthy, under heavy pressure from the conservative wing of his party and facing threats to his speakership, declared the inquiry would begin. 

‘House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct,’ McCarthy said, speaking at the Capitol on Tuesday. ‘Taken together these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.’

‘These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption. And they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives. That’s why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,’ he noted.

‘This logical next step will give our committees, the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public. That’s exactly what we want to know the answers.’

Republicans have charged Biden and his family made millions off shell companies Hunter Biden formed when his father was vice president. Hunter had business deals with an energy company in the Ukraine, received a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China, and did consulting for a Romanian real-estate magnate.

The president has denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings. But Republicans claim at least a dozen Biden family members could be involved in a scheme to benefit financially from Biden’s public office. 

House investigators are expected to issue subpoenas for the bank records of the president and his family. The GOP also claim Biden sat in on at least 24 calls with Hunter’s business partners and was referred to as ‘the big guy’ by Hunter’s business associates. And they say Joe Biden used pseudonyms to discuss his activities related to Ukraine with his son Hunter during his time as vice president.

An inquiry is the first step in the impeachment process. It is when evidence is gathered for the articles, or charges, of impeachment against an official.

It is a massive step with many pitfalls, including infuriating Republican moderates and many GOP senators, who are skeptical of the issue and causing friction with the White House as budget negotiations are underway. Congress faces a September 30th deadline to fund the government or it will shutdown.

McCarthy, however, is under intense pressure from the conservative wing of his party to make such a move, including threats from some of his own GOP lawmakers to remove him from the speakership.

The White House has repeatedly denied Biden has conducted any wrongdoing. The president himself has said he was not involved with any of Hunter’s business deals. 

Some of Hunter’s former associates, however, have testified that Joe Biden spoke to Hunter’s business associates but the president’s defenders say it was quick conversation and merely cordial, not related to any dealmaking. 

Joe Biden also used various private email addresses from which he would sometimes send, receive and forward government correspondence according to emails found on Hunter Biden’s now-infamous laptop.

‘Robin Ware,’ ‘Robert L. Peters’ and ‘JRB ware’ were three pseudonyms used on emails that were about both official and family business.

The White House argues it’s common for public figures to use false names. 

McCarthy charged Biden was involved.

‘Eye witnesses have testified that the President joined on multiple phone calls, and had multiple interactions, dinners, resulted in cars and millions of dollars into his son’s and his son’s business partners,’ he said. 

It’s estimated Hunter raked in $40 million through 20 shell companies and fake accounts created while Joe Biden was vice president, at the same time the elder Biden was joining Hunter’s business calls and stopping by at lavish dinners.

The speaker justified his decision, claiming Biden’s family got special treatment from the government. 

‘It appears that the president’s family has been offered special treatment by Biden’s own administration – treatment that not otherwise would have received if they were not related to the President,’ he noted.

He did not specify how the Bidens got special treatment but House Republicans have demanded records from the Justice, State, and Treasury Departments as part of their probe. Hunter is under investigation by a special counsel and faced an IRS investigation about his taxes.

Hunter Biden has denied any wrong doing. 

House Republicans have been investigating the president and his family since they took control of the lower chamber in January.

Republican Rep. James Comer, chairman of the Oversight Committee, claims there could be upwards of 12 Biden family members who benefitted from influence peddling by the president and Hunter.

While most names have not yet been revealed, Comer previously said that suspicious activity reports (SARs) reviewed by Republicans on the panel have found that President Biden’s brother Jim Biden and his son Beau’s widow Hallie Biden benefited from foreign business deals.

Comer accused Hallie Biden of influence peddling by receiving a $35,000 payment linked to a Chinese firm.

The reports from earlier this year claimed that Hallie received a cut of the $3 million from China sent to an associate of Hunter Biden, whom she dated from 2016-2019 after her husband Beau died of brain cancer.

The White House, at the time, released a blistering statement accusing Republicans of orchestrating an ‘attack’ on Hallie.

Members of the Biden family could get dragged into the impeachment probe.

‘We know that bank records show that nearly $20 million in payments were directed to the Biden family members and associates through various shale companies,’ McCarthy said on Tuesday.

When House Republicans meet on Thursday behind closed doors in the Capitol, the two committee chairmen leading the probes of the Biden family – Reps. Jim Jordan of the Judiciary Committee and Comer – will lay out their findings thus far.

Jordan, Comer and Republican Rep. Jason Smith of the Ways and Means Committee will lead the probe. 

‘I do not make this decision lightly,’ McCarthy said Tuesday.

‘I would encourage the President and his team to fully cooperate with this investigation,’ he added. ‘We are committed to getting the answers for the American public. Nothing more, nothing less. We will go wherever the evidence takes us.’

Three separate Republican-led committees have investigated allegations that Hunter Biden leveraged his father’s vice presidency to secure foreign business deals that made the family a mint.

Hunter is already facing legal issues. Federal prosecutors plan to indict Hunter on illegal gun charges that have a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail by the end of September.

David Weiss, a U.S. attorney appointed by then-President Donald Trump, has been leading the Justice Department probe into the first son. He was given special counsel status last month amid concerns from Republicans that Weiss didn’t have the authority to conduct a proper investigation.

An impeachment inquiry could mean Hunter is brought before Congress to answer questions. 

McCarthy, in announcing the inquiry, is using his unilateral power as speaker to begin the impeachment process. Nancy Pelosi did the same when she was speaker to begin both of Donald Trump’s impeachments.

The entire House could vote to begin impeachment proceedings but there were questions as whether McCarthy could wrangle the 218 votes from House Republicans to authorize it. Some moderate GOP lawmakers have been skeptical of the need for an impeachment inquiry. 

So far, House Republicans have uncovered no evidence that Joe Biden has personally profited off his son Hunter’s business arrangements. 

McCarthy said last month that an impeachment inquiry would only happen with a formal House vote.

‘To open an impeachment inquiry is a serious matter, and House Republicans would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes. The American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their elected representatives,’ McCarthy told Breitbart News 

‘That’s why, if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person.’

In a full House vote, he’d only be able to lose five Republicans. Some had already cast doubt. 

Moderate Republican Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado and Don Bacon of Nebraska have voiced skepticism of the impeachment inquiry. 

But McCarthy is facing other threats.   

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a close Trump ally, has said she wouldn’t vote to fund the government without an impeachment inquiry against Biden. 

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, another ally of the former president, has said if McCarthy stands in the way of the impeachment process, he’d move to remove him from the speakership.

He doubled down on that threat on Tuesday.

Speaking on the House floor shortly after McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry into the president Gaetz warned: ‘Focus on balanced budgets and term limits, subpoenas for Hunter Biden…and impeachment for Joe Biden…Do these things or face a motion to vacate the chair.’

McCarthy became speaker after a deal with the conservative wing of the Republican Party issued a list of demands – including the ability to call a quick vote to ‘vacate the chair’ and remove him from office.

Now that threat hangs over McCarthy’s every move like the sword of damocles.

The speaker is also dealing with a ticking clock when it comes to avoiding a government shutdown. 

If Congress doesn’t pass a bill to fund the government by the end of the month, there will be a partial shutdown. Given the Congressional schedule, there are just 11 working days to do that.

The White House has suggested passing a temporary resolution to keep the government open through the end of the year while negotiations continue.

McCarthy is trying to float a 30-day stopgap measure that would keep things running until  Nov. 1, but conservatives are balking at what’s called a continuing resolution.

The White House has requested that resolution contain $16 billion in disaster relief funds and $24 billion for the Ukraine. Many Republicans want to cut off funding for the Ukraine.

On Wednesday the House of Representatives will vote to impeach President Donald Trump after six hours of debate. It’s expected to happen around 7 PM EST. 

The impeachment vote comes less than five months after the president got on the phone with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and pushed him to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden – a top contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination – while $400 million in military aid to Ukraine was being held up.

The vote was scheduled one day shy of the 21st anniversary of the last time the House took such a step – impeaching Democratic President Bill Clinton for lying under oath on December 19, 1998 after he failed to come clean about an affair he was having with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

Trump will be only the third president to be impeached.

It will mark the end of an eleven and a half month journey for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was resistant to go down the impeachment path when she got the gavel back on January 3, 2019.

With Democrats freshly in power she preached patience to her new squad of liberal lawmakers, knowing a rush to impeach could cost her seats in the districts that won her party the House – swing districts that voted for Trump in 2016,and a Democrat two years later.

To appease the progressives, Pelosi charged her top committee chairs to open investigations. By spring seven separate committees were looking into Trump’s finances, businesses and the content of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which was released publicly in April, and detailed Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The second half of the Mueller Report detailed potential instances of the president’s obstruction of justice, though wouldn’t say whether they counted because of a Department of Justice rule that says a sitting president couldn’t be indicted.

While calls for impeachment continued to crescendo, they hadn’t reached their loudest pitch yet.

On July 24,, the now former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, in hearings that were largely considered a dud.

The next day, Trump got on the phone with Zelensky and made his ask.

He wanted the new Ukrainian president to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden had sat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which Republicans claimed smelled of corruption. Trump also wanted Zelensky to help him firm up a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.

Around August 12, a still-unnamed whistleblower filed a complaint about the president’s conduct on the call.

‘In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,’ the complaint said.

While both Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and House Intelligence Chair Richard Schiff, a California Democrat, are listed as recipients for the complaint, it took another month to reach them.

On August 26 – one month and one day after the president’s call – the inspector general of the intelligence community Michael Atkinson sent a letter to Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence. The inspector general told Maguire that he received a complaint addressed to Congress that is of ‘urgent concern’ and is about a telephone call between the president and Zelensky.

Trump is also informed of the whistleblower complaint in late August.

At first, the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel is resistant to releasing the complaint to Congress, Atkinson pushes for it, telling Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking member Devin Nunes, a California Republican, that he’s working with Maguire to get it released. Atkinson also talked to committee members about the complaint behind closed doors on September 19.

Meanwhile, Trump had let the military aid flow to Ukraine on Sept. 11. He had placed a hold on it on July 18.

The president also started to publicly defend his actions.

‘Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially “heavily populated” call,’ Trump tweeted on September 19. ‘I would only do what is right anyway, and only do good for the USA!’ Trump was referring to how there were officials on the line when he talked to Zelensky, which is how the whistleblower caught wind of its contents.

Trump’s admission of the broad strokes of the call was enough for Pelosi to announce that Democrats were opening an official impeachment inquiry on September 24.

‘The president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically. The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of betrayal of his oath of office and betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,’ Pelosi said in a brief speech on Capitol Hill after meeting with her Democratic members. ‘Therefore, today, I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry and directing our six committees to proceed with their investigation under that umbrellas of impeachment inquiry.’

‘No one is above the law,’ she said.

During the next two days, Democrats get two key pieces of evidence.

First, the White House released a rough transcript of the July 25 call, which confirmed that Zelensky asked the president for the military aid, and the president responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor though.’ The president then asked about the two investigations.

The next day a redacted version of the whistleblower complaint was released. The whistleblower wrote that at least half a dozen officials had doled out details about the call. ‘The White House officials who told me this information were deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call,’ the whistleblower said.

In October, lawmakers from the Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committee started taking depositions in a SCIF – a sensitive compartmented information facility – in the basement of the Capitol Building. 

Republicans, who have utilized a closed door format in past investigations, objected to the secret nature of proceedings, and caused a ruckus on October 23 when 41 GOP lawmakers, led by rabble-rouser Rep. Matt Gaetz, rushed into the SCIF in protest.

GOP grumbling was met five days later with Pelosi’s announcement that she would hold a full House vote on impeachment, which would outline the official proceedings. 

Impeachment would go through the House Intelligence Committee – led by Schiff – with public hearings planned. It would then be turned over to the House Judiciary Committee, where articles would be debated, moved to the Rules Committee and voted on by the full House.

The Halloween vote showed that impeachment was going to be a partisan affair.

No Republicans sided with the Democrats, though Rep Justin Amash, a GOP lawmaker-turned-independent, and top Trump critic, did vote with the majority party.

Two Democrats – Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota – voted alongside Republicans. Van Drew announced this week that he planned to leave the Democratic Party.

On November 13 the public impeachment hearings began. Democrats called 12 witnesses over a nine day time period. Testimony from the witnesses largely matched up.

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch spoke of a plan hatched by Rudy Giuliani and his now-indicted associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to remove her from her job. Yovanovitch characterized their actions as setting the table for the pressure campaign that would come several months later.

Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that it was the ‘express direction of the president’ that he, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker work with Giuliani on Ukraine issues, even though they were uncomfortable with Trump’s personal attorney’s role. 

Sondland also linked Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to the plot, telling lawmakers that ‘everyone was in the loop.’ 

Sondland testified that it was Trump, via Giuliani, who wanted Zelensky to publicly announce an investigation into Burisma, the Ukrainian firm tied to Hunter Biden. He also tied that as a condition for a White House visit. 

‘Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes,’ Sondland said, using language that Trump had used to deny such a plan. 

Sondland also testified it was his ‘personal guess’ that the aid was also being withheld to achieve this purpose.

Using both the public and the closed door testimony, the Intelligence Committee issued a draft report of their findings, and then voted it out of committee – turning the contents over to the House Judiciary Committee to take things over from that point on.

While invited, the White House refused to cooperate.

The first Judiciary Committee hearing consisted of testimony from legal experts, including one witness, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who said the Democrats weren’t there yet.

The next day Pelosi instructed the committees to draft articles of impeachment anyway.

Next, lawyers representing both parties went over the material gathered by the Intelligence Committee. This format drove Intelligence Committee ranking member Doug Collins bonkers, as he pushed continuously for ‘fact’ witnesses instead of staffers playing a game of telephone.

The next morning, top Democrats gathered at the Capitol Building announcing they would pursue just two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The narrow focus all but assured the bulk of House Democrats would vote in favor of impeachment, and a majority of Democrats who represent Trump-winning districts said they planned to vote yes in advance of Wednesday’s vote.

The articles of impeachment had two more hurdles. They had to be voted out of the House Judiciary Committee. That happened Friday morning after a 14-plus hour amendment-focused hearing Thursday ended with Nadler postponing the vote until the next morning.

Repubilcan committee members were steamed. Democrats argued that such an important vote shouldn’t take place in the middle of the night.

After Friday’s party-line vote, the House Rules Committee took up the articles of impeachment all-day Tuesday, finally deciding around 9:30 PM – after more than 12 hours – that the full House debate would be limited to six hours – and no more Republican amendments would be allowed to be proposed.

Republicans have spent days howling over the process Democrats used to get to Wednesday’s vote. Democrats could have continued to pursue outstanding subpoenas of White House officials, but concluded they had enough evidence to wrap things up.

At the Rules Committee Tuesday, Collins called it a ‘kangaroo court,’ likened what happened to ‘Alice and Wonderland’ and said the Democrats speeding to impeach was like their ‘’last minute Christmas shopping’ to appease an uber liberal base.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who was filling in for Nadler on Tuesday due to a family medical emergency, argued that Democrats were impeaching Trump for obstruction of Congress because he wouldn’t give White House officials or documents up.

‘We’ve done nothing other then try and get all the president’s men to come in and testify,’ Raskin said, recalling a famous book title about President Nixon’s almost-impeachment. Nixon resigned before being impeached when he realized he wouldn’t survive a Senate trial.

Trump has the Senate support to stay in office.

‘To me it’s the height of irony that you guys are making the argument that somehow we don’t want the evidence in,’ Raskin said. ‘That’s why we want to hold the president in obstruction of justice, because he’s preventing us from getting all of it.’ 

Republicans want to IMPEACH Biden if they retake the House: GOP want to try President for ‘high crimes’ over the border and the Afghanistan withdrawal

• Some Republican lawmakers are signaling that they’ll make impeaching President Joe Biden a priority if their party wins control of the House
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s office told DailyMail.com that she intends to file for impeachment against Biden next year
• She and other Republicans have called to impeach Biden multiple times
• It had virtually no chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled House
• House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy previously vowed not to impeach Biden for ‘political purposes’ but did not rule it out altogether 

By Elizabeth Elkind, Politics Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 11:22 EDT, 30 August 2022 | Updated: 13:49 EDT, 30 August 2022