McCarthy: 'There are enough allegations' for Biden impeachment inquiry
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., responds to criticism on 'Hannity.'
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., rejected Democrats' claims that his formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden is an appeasement to the "extreme MAGA" wing of the GOP as he detailed some of the allegations liberals say are not evidence of influence peddling and wrongdoing.
McCarthy told "Hannity" last week that his Democratic counterparts have been wrong in claiming his impeachment inquiry is illegitimate, saying the well-known Burisma storyline is evidence enough. However, he argued, Special Counsel David Weiss' handling of the Hunter Biden criminal probe compounds the need for scrutiny.
The speaker's counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., had declared that "extreme-MAGA Republicans have launched an illegitimate impeachment inquiry that is a kangaroo court, fishing expedition and conspiracy theater rolled into one."
Jeffries claimed there is "not a shred of evidence" against the president, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom separately claimed McCarthy's Bakersfield district is the "murder capital of California" and that he is running Congress like a "student government."
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Hakeem Jeffries, Kevin McCarthy (Win McNamee, Kevin Dietsch via Getty)
McCarthy argued that he could detail the evidence against Biden explicitly.
"I can give you chapter verse in detail… and yet they just claim that there's no evidence at all," McCarthy said on "Hannity" last week, "Is it normal for a vice president – we know in October 2015; it became official Obama administration policy, too; that Ukraine had made enough progress on the issue of corruption, that they, through an interagency agreement, agreed that it was time to give them $1 billion in loan guarantees. It was Joe Biden's job to give that to them."
"Five days before his trip to Ukraine, he got on the phone with Burisma executives and his son Hunter at a time that Burisma executives the saying and begging, they needed help. They needed help in D.C…. [and] he goes to Ukraine. That's when he leveraged $1 billion of our taxpayer dollars demanding a prosecutor get fired."
The firing of Viktor Shokin, which Biden notably retold in his "well, son of a b----, he got fired" quip to the Council on Foreign Relations, allowed Hunter Biden to continue to be paid millions of dollars on-the-job as a Burisma boardmember, despite his own admission he lacked proper experience.
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"And we're talking about tens of millions of dollars, never mind the shell corporations, never mind the grandkids getting paid. So 'no evidence'? That sounds like a lot of evidence to me," McCarthy said.
McCarthy said the Justice Department appeared to allow the statute of limitation to expire on Hunter Biden's alleged tax violations, which he said have several connections to Joe Biden. He added that the IRS would never allow such a lapse if it involved an average American citizen.
"Remember wh[at] Hunter Biden told [as to] why he's on that board? He said he had no experience. He was there because it was part of the Biden brand," McCarthy said.
The White House urged media outlets to "ramp up [their] scrutiny" of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry of Biden in a message to news organizations on Wednesday. McCarthy suggested this is one reason why his impeachment inquiry on Biden is so important.
"That is exactly why I did the impeachment inquiry: It empowers Congress from the Republicans and Democrats to be able to get the answers to all these questions," he said.
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