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Trump Org now a High Crime and Misdemeanor?

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 28, 2023

Premise of GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry

It is a consistent ploy of conspiracy theorist that where supporting “evidence” is concerned, what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity.

That was plenty evident on Wednesday when Republicans introduced their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden by releasing 700 pages of bird shot.

It did not go well for House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) when asked by NBC’s Richard Neal to explain why whatever Hunter Biden did when his father was a private citizen was somehow an abuse of power and worthy of impeaching Joe Biden now.

But we have 700 pages! Have you read our 700 pages?!

This takes place, of course, against a backdrop of a House GOP-precipitated government shutdown that will, as Marcy Wheeler writes, “lead to millions of government workers and service members either getting laid off, or working without pay, will strain food support for poor families and limit food inspections, and will result in holdups for people traveling by air.”

But, you know, His Indictedness demands a retributive impeachment, so his fawning acolytes will oblige or face his wrath and that of the cult. Their rationale, says Wheeler, “is nothing short of batshit insane“:

That’s true, first of all, because they plan to impeach Joe Biden for actions his son took while Joe wasn’t even in government. One of their latest new fetishes is that in 2019, Hunter Biden used his father’s address as a permanent address and got legal financial transfers at it.

Again, much of this impeachment is about Joe Biden being a Dad.

Crazier still, the premise of this impeachment is that Hunter Biden traded on the family brand and he and his associates (including James Biden, but also a bunch of people who made far more money) made a paltry $24 million by doing so.

In other words, just days after a judge ruled that Trump and two of his sons had wildly inflated his own value — including by adding a brand premium to his properties!!! — continuing into the years he was President, Republicans want to impeach Joe Biden because business interests Joe Biden wasn’t part of tried to do that on a far, far smaller scale.

Republicans are impeaching Joe Biden because his son had business interests with a Chinese company, the most salacious interactions of which occurred the year after the Obama Administration, even though Trump’s own daughter benefited from her own family’s brand and her nepotistic job in the White House to obtain trademarks from the government of China during some of the same years.

Don’t overtax yourselves trying to make sense of it. There’s no sense there.

In the same year Republicans allege that Hunter Biden traded on his family name to make money in China (2017), the Trump family business made $17.5 million there.

Republicans “are going to pursue an impeachment premised on the notion that Trump’s entire business model is a High Crime and Misdemeanor,” Wheeler writes pointedly.

I don’t have Marcy’s eye for legal detail. But skimming through the GOP’s Impeachment Inquiry memorandum, 30 pages of innuendo and 190 footnotes, I can’t spot a citation of a single U.S. Code — none — that the committee believes Joe Biden broke as a public official or as a private citizen. The most they’ve got is a complaint about “classified materials discovered in the President’s home … for which a former president has faced federal indictment.” And Biden has not, they mean.

Good luck with that.

Update from Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas): “I can’t seem to find the crime. And honestly, no one has testified of what crime they believe the president of the United States has committed.”

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