Kevin McCarthy announced Monday that the House Oversight Committee's findings could trigger a possible impeachment of Joe Biden. There are doubts about the importance and potential connections that the current president has with the business of his son, Hunter. However, the idea of impeachment proceedings does not excite the Senate.
The Republican appeared on Fox News and said they would follow the evidence regardless of the consequences. "When President Biden was running for office, he told the American public that he's never talked about business. He said his family has never received a dollar from China, which we now prove is not true," he said in an interview with Sean Hannity.
"I think we will follow this to the end, and this will result in an impeachment investigation the way the Constitution tells us to do it," he added.
House Republican lawmakers still vividly remember the two impeachment trials Democrats pushed against Donald Trump. According to McCarthy's statements, they seem to want retaliation.
Senate Republicans' lack of enthusiasm
However, the idea does not greatly excite Senate Republicans, who prefer to concentrate their efforts on pulling or stopping legislation, or at least that was what some members of the GOP leadership expressed.
One of them was John Thune (R-SD), Mitch McConnell's number two, who preferred to distance himself from his colleagues' intentions in the House of Representatives. "Staying focused on the future and not the past is, in my opinion, the best way to change the direction of the country, and that is to win an election," he said in a dialogue with reporters on Capitol Hill.
Similarly, Joni Ernst (R-IO) expressed herself, clarifying that her priorities are legislative. "I'm really focused on NDAA right now. I really want to see it get done and I want a bipartisan deal between the House and Senate. I think that's what we're focused on," she said.
"We need to get our [appropriations] bills done, too. So, that's what we're going to focus on in the Senate," added the chairwoman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
Finally, McConnell declined to comment on the impeachment of Joe Biden, implying that it is not on his list of priorities for the remainder of the Democrat's administration, which for now will seek another four years in the White House.
The last impeachment trial of a Democratic president
It happened in 1998, and the victim was Bill Clinton, who was charged with two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of abuse of power. Although only two were approved by the House of Representatives, they died in the Senate days later.
All Democrats in the Upper House voted "not guilty" in both cases, while Republicans were split: all voted in favor of obstruction of justice, and 10 joined Democrats in defending the president from perjury.
