Biden impeachment latest: GOP’s own witnesses contradict main claims in ‘disaster’ first hearing

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, slammed the impeachment proceedings on Thursday.

“They are wasting time and taxpayer dollars in an illegitimate impeachment inquiry when we’re about 48 away or so from an extreme MAGA Republican government shutdown — and this is what they’re focused on?” he asked.

Mr Raskin asked Prof Gephardt what he makes “of the idea of impeaching a president for something his son did when the president wasn’t in office?”

“Just imagine if the names were switched. Just imagine if this was Jared Kushner,” the professor said, referring to Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia made his point during the hearing by deliberately mistaking Mr Biden for Mr Trump, speaking about “Biden towers” all over the world and shared mock concern about Mr Biden appointing his son to be in charge of US Middle East policy, in reference to Mr Trump’s appointment of Mr Kushner.

“Shouldn’t we be concerned about all those Biden towers all over the world where foreign partnerships were formed and influence was used here in the US? I’ve seen these towers in Indonesia, in the Philippines, in Turkey. I’ve even seen one in Chicago,” Mr Connelly said sarcastically.

Asked about what part of the evidence is missing, Mr Turley said: “The key here that the committee has to drill down on is whether they can establish a linkage with the influence peddling which is a form of corruption and the President –Whether he had knowledge, whether he participated, whether he encouraged it.”

But he added that “We simply don’t know. And we don’t even know if this was an illusion or not. But you can’t find the answers to that”.

House Republicans’ first effort to justify the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden demanded by former president Donald Trump and far-right members of the GOP conference ended without a single piece of evidence presented linking Mr Biden to any wrongdoing whatsoever.

The panel’s chairman, Representative James Comer of Kentucky, opened the hearing by claiming that his GOP colleagues had assembled “a mountain of evidence” that will show that the president “abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” adding later that his committee would “follow the money and the evidence to provide accountability” for Mr Biden’s alleged wrongdoing.

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the oversight committee’s top Democrat, derided the panel’s efforts as “an impeachment drive based on a long debunked and discredited lie” and said the Republicans “don’t have a shred of evidence against President Biden for an impeachable offence”.

The all-day session before the House Oversight Committee took place just days before the federal government is set to run out of operating funds at the end of the 2023 fiscal year, and focused largely on widely-discredited and long-ago debunked conspiracy theories about Mr Biden and his son, attorney and former lobbyist turned artist Hunter Biden.

The allegations against the 46th president, which centre around the younger Mr Biden’s work on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, were first prolmugated by disgraced former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 2018 and 2019, and formed the basis of Mr Trump’s attempt to extort Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky during a now-infamous July 2019 phone call — an incident which led to the first of Mr Trump’s two impeachment trials.

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On 28 September, House Republicans held the first impeachment inquiry hearing on Joe Biden and his potential connections to his son Hunter’s business.

House Democrats came prepared to attack their claims, calling out the lack of evidence and lack of witnesses that could speak directly about the allegations.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee, lead the slap down, saying Republicans “just want to see the world burn.”

The inquiry is opening as the federal government is days away from a shutdown that would halt paychecks for millions of federal workers and the military.