Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced the start of an impeachment inquiry Tuesday into President Joe Biden over his family’s businesses. But he stopped short of calling for a vote to authorize the inquiry.
The problem: Republicans argued during the first impeachment of President Donald Trump that Democrats could not use Congress to subpoena the White House until the House had voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry. In fact, that argument was a major part of President Trump’s defense against the charge that he obstructed Congress by refusing to comply with subpoenas issued before an inquiry had been formally authorized by a House vote.
There is ample precedent for the idea that Congress has limited subpoena powers against the White House when it is performing a legislative function, but sweeping subpoena powers in an impeachment — once it is authorized.
As Breitbart News noted in 2020, D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote a crucial dissent in which she “distinguished between the more limited powers a congressional committee has when it is conducting its legislative function, and the more expansive powers it has when it is conducting an investigation for the purpose of impeachment.” The Supreme Court largely agreed with Rao in limiting congressional subpoenas in the Trump v. Mazars case (2020).
The whole purpose in launching an impeachment inquiry, as Breitbart News argued — in January, March, June, and July — is to use the special subpoena powers of Congress to investigate Biden and his family’s business deals, which the Department of Justice has shown no interest in doing. Announcing an impeachment inquiry without a vote to authorize one means that Congress can issue subpoenas, but that the White House will likely ignore them.
It may be that McCarthy lacks the votes. Regardless, unless there is a formal vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry, Republicans will soon find themselves arguing, as Democrats tried in 2019, that they do not need such a vote before they begin. Meanwhile, the Biden White House can refuse to comply with congressional subpoenas, setting up court fights and dragging out the inquiry process for years, meaning there will be no real accountability.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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