WASHINGTON: The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.
The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.
Biden, in a rare statement about the impeachment effort, questioned the priorities of House Republicans in pursuing an inquiry against him and his family.
“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” the president said following the vote. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”
Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.
The decision to hold a vote came as Speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.
“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome,” Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement after the vote. “But the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore.”
House Democrats stood in united opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday, calling it a farce perpetrated by those across the aisle to avenge the two impeachments against Trump.
“This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said during a floor debate.
Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden’s impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.
“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.
Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps toward impeachment proceedings be considered.”
Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.
A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.”
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about.”
“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Nebraska, who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. “Let’s see what they find out.”
House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.
“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”
Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the president and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.
Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.
Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.
Democrats have conceded that while the president’s son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.
“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.”
Hunter Biden arrived for a rare public statement outside the US Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president’s son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs.
His attorney has offered for Biden to testify publicly, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony.
“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”
GOP lawmakers said that since Hunter Biden did not appear, they will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against him. “He just got into more trouble today,” Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Committee chairman, told reporters Wednesday.
House approves impeachment inquiry into President Biden as Republicans rally behind investigation
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House approves impeachment inquiry into President Biden as Republicans rally behind investigation
- GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies
US to cut roughly 200 NATO positions, sources say
- Trump famously threatened to withdraw from NATO during his first presidential term and said on the campaign trail that he would encourage Russia to attack NATO members that did not pay their fair share on defense
WASHINGTON: The United States plans to reduce the number of personnel it has stationed within several key NATO command centers, a move that could intensify concerns in Europe about Washington’s commitment to the alliance, three sources familiar with the matter said this week.
As part of the move, which the Trump administration has communicated to some European capitals, the US will eliminate roughly 200 positions from the NATO entities that oversee and plan the alliance’s military and intelligence operations, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private diplomatic conversations.
Among the bodies that will be affected, said the sources, are the UK-based NATO Intelligence Fusion Center and the Allied Special Operations Forces Command in Brussels. Portugal-based STRIKFORNATO, which oversees some maritime operations, will also be cut, as will several other similar NATO entities, the sources said.
The sources did not specify why the US had decided to cut the number of staff dedicated to the NATO roles, but the moves broadly align with the Trump administration’s stated intention to shift more resources toward the Western Hemisphere.
The Washington Post first reported the decision.
TRUMP RE-POSTS MESSAGE IDENTIFYING NATO AS THREAT
The changes are small relative to the size of the US military force stationed in Europe and do not necessarily signal a broader US shift away from the continent. Around 80,000 military personnel are stationed in Europe, almost half of them in Germany. But the moves are nonetheless likely to stoke European anxiety about the future of the alliance, which is already running high given US President Donald Trump’s stepped-up campaign to wrest Greenland away from Denmark, raising the unprecedented prospect of territorial aggression within NATO.
On Tuesday morning, the US president, who is scheduled to fly to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in the evening, shared another user’s post on social media that identified NATO as a threat to the United States. The post described China and Russia as merely “boogeymen.”
Asked for comment, a NATO official said changes to US staffing are not unusual and that the US presence in Europe is larger than it has been in years.
“NATO and US authorities are in close contact about our overall posture – to ensure NATO retains our robust capacity to deter and defend,” the NATO official said.
The White House and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment.
MILITARY IMPACT UNCLEAR, SYMBOLIC IMPACT OBVIOUS
Reuters could not obtain a full list of NATO entities that will be affected by the new policy. About 400 US personnel are stationed within the entities that will see cuts, one of the sources said, meaning the total number of Americans at the affected NATO bodies will be reduced by roughly half.
Rather than recalling servicemembers from their current posts, the US will for the most part decline to backfill them as they move on from their positions, the sources said.
The drawdown comes as the alliance traverses one of the most diplomatically fraught moments in its 77-year history. Trump famously threatened to withdraw from NATO during his first presidential term and said on the campaign trail that he would encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack NATO members that did not pay their fair share on defense. But he appeared to warm to NATO over the first half of 2025, effusively praising NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and other European leaders after they agreed to boost defense spending at a June summit.
In recent weeks, however, his administration has again provoked alarm across Europe. In early December, Pentagon officials told diplomats that the US wants Europe to take over the majority of NATO’s conventional defense capabilities, from intelligence to missiles, by 2027, a deadline that struck European officials as unrealistic. A key US national security document released shortly after called for the US to dedicate more of its military resources to the Western Hemisphere, calling into question whether Europe will continue to be a priority theater for the US
In the first weeks of 2026, Trump has revived his longstanding campaign to acquire Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark, enraging officials in Copenhagen and throughout Europe, many of whom believe any territorial aggression within the alliance would mark the end of NATO. Over the weekend, Trump said he would slap several NATO countries with tariffs starting February 1 due to their support for Denmark’s sovereignty over the island. That has caused European Union officials to mull retaliatory tariffs of their own.
