Two weeks ago, a trio of House committees released a 291-page report on the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
It was quickly forgotten. Biden is no longer running for reelection, and the political incentives for going after the president — after all, impeachment is a fundamentally political process — have greatly diminished.
That’s on top of the other road bumps Republicans’ monthslong effort has already encountered along the way.
Now, the House has just 13 more days left in session before the November election, and Republicans will have to decide whether to follow through with something that many in the GOP base want them to do — but could hurt the swing-district Republicans that are crucial to maintaining the party’s majority.
The impeachment inquiry, which every House Republican voted to formally authorize in December, focused on the notion that Biden had sought to corruptly benefit from his son Hunter’s business dealings.
Yet the report, despite arguing that Biden “abused his public office for the private financial benefit of the Biden family,” failed to establish that the president received direct financial benefits from his family’s business dealings, or sought to change US policy as a result. And key aspects of the committees’ evidence was discredited along the way.
In a statement following the report’s release, House Speaker Mike Johnson released a statement commending the the work of the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees that worked on the report, and encouraged “all Americans to read this report.”
But he did not signal that any vote would be forthcoming, and dozens of Republicans remain skeptical of the idea of formally impeaching Biden.
Still, individual Republican lawmakers could seek to force a vote on impeaching Biden through a privileged resolution, as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado threatened to do last year.
And Republicans have come up with other reasons to impeach Biden, ranging from disagreements with the administration’s border policies to Biden’s delay in sending some weapons to Israel.
Democrats, meanwhile, appear giddy at the prospect of a rogue rank-and-file Republican lawmaker forcing the issue of impeachment in the waning days of the election.
“Call the vote. They should do that. That vote is a paved road to the minority,” Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida told Axios last week.
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