Speaker McCarthy had twelve days earlier said an inquiry would require a majority House vote. He initiated the inquiry stating that recent House investigations "paint a picture of corruption" by Biden and his family.[1][2][3][4] No congressional investigations had yet discovered any evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden himself.[a] The inquiry held a public hearing on September 28, 2023.[9]
Despite neither the earlier Comer committee investigation nor the impeachment inquiry finding evidence of wrongdoing by the president, on December 13, 2023, majority House Republicans unanimously approved a resolution to formalize the inquiry. Democrats unanimously voted against the resolution.[10] Lacking evidence and Republican appetite to proceed to impeachment hearings with their thin House majority, by March 2024 the impeachment inquiry was winding down.[11][12]
On February 15, 2024, the FBI arrested and charged Alexander Smirnov, who was the central[13][14] figure in bribery allegations against Joe Biden for lying to investigators and fabricating an uncorroborated[13] story to damage Biden's reelection campaign, and that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved" in manufacturing the story.[13][15][16][17]
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