By The opinion
Mar 16, 2024, 00:49 AM EDT
White House counsel Ed Siskel on Friday urged the House of Representatives to end its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Siskel said the GOP lacked evidence to prove his claims that the president and his family became rich through his son Hunter Biden’s businesses.
“I am writing to you today because it is clear that the House Republican impeachment trial is over,” White House counsel Ed Siskel wrote in the letter to Johnson, which was also shared with top lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee. the House and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, according to The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the letter.
House Republican lawmakers’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has dragged on for more than a year without achieving the expected results.
“The House Majority should be working with the President on our economy, national security, and other important priorities on behalf of the American people, not continue wasting time on political stunts like this,” Siskel continued in his letter.
The four-page letter notes that House Republicans compiled 100,000 pages of records, interviewed dozens of witnesses and held several public hearings.
“The investigation has continually turned up evidence that the president did, in fact, do nothing wrong,” the letter reads. “In fact, he has proven the opposite of what House Republicans have claimed. The House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have heard not one, not two, but more than 20 witnesses who have confirmed this.”
Johnson has maintained that the committees should continue their work and on Friday his office rejected the White House’s request to end the investigation. He called the request “not surprising.”
“The White House cannot decide how the impeachment is resolved, that is for Congress to decide,” Raj Shah, deputy chief of staff to the speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a statement.
House Republicans have been pursuing allegations of shady dealings by President Biden for virtually his entire presidency, but have yet to be able to bring forward specific accusations backed by evidence.
The impeachment inquiry has hit serious obstacles, including the arrest of Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant who alleged that President Biden accepted a bribe, accused of having lied about the matter to the agency.
Biden has denied being involved in his son’s business affairsand he and other White House officials have called the impeachment inquiry a political stunt ahead of the November general election.
The House investigation has unfolded as former President Donald Trump, who will face Biden in a rematch in November, faces criminal trials over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Keep reading:
– Hunter Biden agreed to testify before the House in the impeachment inquiry against his father
– Biden criticized the impeachment inquiry against him as “a baseless political stunt”
– Keys to the impeachment of Biden initiated by Republicans in the House