House GOP impeachment inquiry vote hinges on vulnerable members

House Republicans pushing through the last stages of their impeachment probe into President Biden are relying on moderate and swing-district lawmakers to get a formal vote authorizing the inquiry through the razor-thin GOP majority.

Many of the House GOP’s most vulnerable members are lining up behind the inquiry vote, downplaying the political risk that comes with it by saying the referendum simply bolsters their ability to investigate.

They are drawing a distinction between voting to authorize an inquiry and supporting actual impeachment articles down the road — even as those leading the investigations argue the evidence uncovered so far is compelling.

“That’s what I’m supporting right now — the process. I’m supporting the process that will just let us see the truth,” said Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.).

Any official impeachment is likely to heavily feature long-disputed and shaky allegations of bribery involving the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine energy company Burisma — claims that were intertwined with former President Trump’s first impeachment and could cause political headaches for many members facing tough reelections.

The multi-pronged impeachment inquiry — headed by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) — is also probing the foreign business activities of Biden’s family members and whether the Department of Justice improperly slow-walked a tax crimes investigation into Hunter Biden.

“The impeachable offense is — I think, the key thing is in Burisma,” Jordan told reporters Monday while outlining his portion of the investigation, a presentation similar to one he has given to GOP members. He expects remaining interviews of key witnesses to be completed over the next six to seven weeks.

At least one GOP lawmaker isn’t convinced. 

“Hunter Biden did a lot of really bad things. And if there’s a link with Joe Biden, I think the inquiry is fair. I don’t see that link at this point,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), one of the most vocal House GOP critics of the impeachment probe.

“Whenever you use the I-word, you are setting an expectation with the public that you’re going to follow through with an impeachment, and that’s one of my problems with this,” Buck said.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said he needs to talk to the GOP chair about why the party wants to hold an inquiry vote before making a decision.

“They need to walk me through. I need to know what they can’t get now that they will be able to get,” Fitzpatrick said.

Still, leaders of the House GOP impeachment probe say that they expect the razor-thin House GOP to unify around an official inquiry vote, which leaders plan to bring to the House floor next week.

“All the moderates in our conference understand this is not a political decision. This is a legal decision,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a press conference Tuesday.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who said he plans to support the inquiry vote, outlined the political risks of moving toward a vote on impeachment articles on a party-line basis.

“If you get like, zero Democratic votes, it’s just gonna die in the Senate,” Bacon said. “When you look at the history of it, anybody that’s done that, they get a beating in the next election.”

But another House GOP member from a district Biden won in 2020 downplayed the risk of a partisan impeachment vote compared to other factors affecting 2024 — such as Trump.

“It’s not necessarily what we want to do. But that said, if we’re going into the presidential [election] with Trump at the top of the ticket, this is not the thing we’re gonna be worried about,” said the GOP member, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

The White House, which has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing by the president, has pointed to numerous statements from House Republicans who previously expressed skepticism of the impeachment inquiry. 

“All these House Republicans and their colleagues should answer for why they would change tune now and go along with her baseless exercise to smear President Biden when their allegations have already been thoroughly fact-checked and debunked, instead of focusing on the issues they claimed they would prioritize when they ran for office, like lowering inflation, growing the economy, and strengthening national security,” Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said in a statement.

The move to vote on the impeachment inquiry at all also marks a notable shift for the House GOP conference.

Ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced an impeachment inquiry on his own accord in September, notably bypassing a formal vote to launch the inquiry in a move that was perceived by many as a way to protect vulnerable members in the conference.

But as the inquiry ramps up in its final stages — with House Republicans hoping to enforce subpoenas to land big-name witnesses — top Republicans are teeing up a vote to bolster their investigation.

Comer argued that the Thanksgiving break helped sway more moderate members who were once skeptics of the impeachment investigation to support the probe.

“We were in Washington, D.C., for 10 weeks, and there are about 15 or 20 moderates that they really worry about what CNN says or what the Washington Post writes. And they were getting in their head,” Comer said Sunday on Fox Business’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” 

“But something happened over Thanksgiving. Many of the members went home … and they met people in Walmart and people on Main Street, and they were like, ‘What in the world have the Bidens done to receive millions and millions of dollars from our enemies around the world?’” Comer said. 

The White House, while responding to a flurry of House GOP subpoenas, had argued in November that the probe was not constitutional because it had not been authorized with a vote.

“You also claim the mantle of an ‘impeachment inquiry’ knowing full well that the Constitution requires that the full House authorize an impeachment inquiry before a committee may utilize compulsory process pursuant to the impeachment power — a step the Republican House majority has so far refused to take,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote last month.

Jordan told reporters that letter helped push the House GOP to formalize the inquiry with a vote.

“Constitutionally, it’s not required. Speaker said we’re [in] an impeachment inquiry, [then] we’re in an impeachment inquiry,” Jordan said. “But if you have a vote of the full House of Representatives and the majority say we’re in that official status as part of our overall oversight work or constitutional oversight duty that we have, it just helps us in court.”

Mychael Schnell and Rebecca Beitsch contributed.