Biden impeachment effort on the brink of collapse

The House GOP’s push to impeach Joe Biden appears close to stalling out for good.

First, the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas scraped through on the narrowest of margins — and took two tries, raising serious doubts about Republicans’ appetite for an even bigger impeachment fight. Then, a high-profile informant making bribery allegations against the Biden family was not only indicted, but has now linked some of his information to Russian intelligence.

Even before those recent developments, the numbers were lining up against House Republicans, who can only afford to lose two votes on the floor after Democrats won a special election in New York. Falling short on a Biden impeachment would be yet another embarrassing bullet point for a conference that struggles to square the ambitious demands of its right flank with the reality of a thin majority.

“I happen to know there are like 20 Republicans who are not in favor of a Biden impeachment. Mainly because it smells bad what he did, it looks bad, but when you ask them what crime is committed — they can’t tell you,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a vulnerable purple-district incumbent who'd raised doubts about impeaching Mayorkas but eventually backed that effort.

Bacon estimated that as many as 30 House GOP lawmakers may be currently opposed to impeaching the president because they haven’t seen evidence of any crime. Private briefings to update members on the investigation haven’t swayed those holdouts, and Republicans know it only gets politically riskier to try to impeach Biden as they head deeper into an election year — possibly giving the president a polling boost even if they succeed.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), in a TV interview after the party lost a special election in New York last week, said that the “math keeps getting worse” for impeaching Biden. Conservatives, however, are still hoping to eke out new momentum from next week's scheduled deposition of Hunter Biden and a March hearing with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.

But members across the ideological spectrum acknowledge that recommending Biden's removal from office will be much harder than the previous vote on Mayorkas. They had hoped impeaching the Cabinet official would be an easy way to vent anger about Biden's handling of the southern border; instead, it became the latest warning sign that the GOP's so-far thin case against the president is going nowhere.

Asked if House Republicans would be able to impeach Biden after they initially failed on Mayorkas, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) bluntly said “no.” Norman, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, added that the conference “should have been at 100 percent” on wanting to oust the Cabinet official.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), in an interview with CBS News’ "The Takeout with Major Garrett” podcast, pegged the odds that Biden impeachment articles get a floor vote as “less than 50 percent.” And speaking at Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a member of the Oversight Committee, predicted that Republicans wouldn't "get to a point, quite honestly, where we’re going to be able to impeach him, especially with the thin margin that we have.”

To be clear, the more high-profile vote against Biden was always going to be tougher for centrists to swallow unless GOP investigators could show clear evidence of the president committing a crime. But even some Republicans on the committees leading the impeachment push privately admit they’ve heard little from top investigators in recent weeks, as those leaders quietly conduct a string of interviews.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), one impeachment skeptic on the Judiciary Committee, said he would “listen to the evidence.” But he's one member who's heard nothing from investigators recently about impeaching Biden.

“How many are we going to send over to the Senate?” he asked about the House GOP’s broader impeachment plans. The Senate is poised to hold a brief trial on Mayorkas next week that lawmakers expect will be quickly dismissed.

Every Republican voted late last year to formalize the impeachment inquiry against Biden, a win for GOP leadership that came with a pretty big caveat: Many Republicans warned that voting “yes” on the interim step did not mean they would ultimately support impeachment. Instead, they were trying to give investigators more teeth in any legal fights over locking down records and interviews.

If GOP leaders decide to push on, the next step would be drafting formal impeachment articles. Republicans are expected to decide next month whether to pursue those — a decision that is likely to be made by Speaker Mike Johnson in consultation with the conference.

More than just the tough whip count looms over that decision. The Justice Department recently charged an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who was behind a bribery allegation that temporarily became a point of focus for the House investigation last year.

According to a 2020 FBI document, Smirnov recounted what he characterized as a conversation with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukraine energy company Burisma, whom he alleged claimed to have paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden a bribe — an allegation that was fabricated, per a recent DOJ court filing.

After the new details about Smirnov emerged, Republican investigators started distancing their probe from his initial accusations. That included deleting references to the FBI document from a letter they sent this week requesting an interview with a White House staffer.

Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asserted to reporters that “it doesn’t change the fundamental facts." And Comer, in a statement after Smirnov was indicted, said that the inquiry “is not reliant” on the FBI’s 2020 document summarizing Smirnov's allegations.

“We will continue to follow the facts to propose legislation to reform federal ethics laws and to determine whether articles of impeachment are warranted,” Comer added.

Republican investigators have compiled thousands of pages of bank and financial records and hundreds of hours of interviews with witnesses as they’ve hunted for evidence that would link actions Joe Biden took as president or vice president to his family’s business deals. While they’ve turned up plenty of instances of Biden’s family members using their last name to try to bolster their own influence, in addition to poking holes in previous statements by Joe Biden and the White House, they’ve struggled to find that proverbial smoking gun.

For example, one previous associate of Hunter Biden’s testified that he would put Joe Biden on speaker phone during dinners, or that the now-president stopped by dinners with business associates — but he also underscored that business wasn’t discussed in those moments. Rob Walker, another former Hunter Biden associate, told investigators that Joe Biden wasn’t involved in their business deals.

And even as he recounted how Joe Biden stopped by a lunch with business associates while out of political office in 2017, Walker characterized the appearance as exchanging “pleasantries.”

Republicans have also focused on Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden, whom they spoke with behind closed doors for hours on Wednesday. James Biden has come under growing scrutiny in recent years because of public reporting, including from POLITICO, that he pitches businesses on hiring him by touting ties to his brother.

But those tidbits haven't been enough to convince nearly all House Republicans to back impeachment — where they could only lose two votes at full attendance. Some lawmakers who eventually relented and agreed to impeach Mayorkas are warning that GOP leaders shouldn't necessarily bet they'll make the same flip on Biden.

“They’re two separate cases,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) said in a brief interview. When it comes to the Biden impeachment effort, he added, “I’ve not seen any evidence. I’ve heard a lot of accusations.”

Olivia Beavers contributed reporting.