Democrat Dean Phillips: Biden Impeachment Inquiry ‘Perhaps Makes Him Unelectable’

The impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden “perhaps makes him unelectable,” said Democrat Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), who is running against the president for the Democrat 2024 presidential nomination.

Phillips’ willingness to target Biden over the impeachment inquiry demonstrates a political vulnerability for the president, as he looks to faceoff again against former President Donald Trump as the likely GOP nominee.

“I don’t see the evidence of it, but yes, when your own son and your own brother are clearly, at the very least unethical and at worst, doing illegal things — my goodness, of course the country pays attention to it,” Phillips told Semafor.

Phillips also questioned whether impeachment proceedings would coalesce Democrats around Biden as Republicans mostly united behind Trump during his two impeachment proceedings.

“People do believe that it perhaps makes him unelectable — somehow, it conflates him with the Trump family’s indiscretions,” Phillips said.

The House is set to vote to formalize an impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, enabling investigators to enforce subpoenas and giving them the power to gather additional evidence, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Tuesday.

The full House vote will be a test for House Republicans, who hold a slight majority over House Democrats. The measure will need nearly all Republican support.

• Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) opened an “impeachment inquiry” on September 12, but lawmakers did not vote to approve the measure.
• If the impeachment inquiry receives majority support on the House floor, the inquiry will be formally adopted, a status that Johnson says will help the House’s inquiry obtain information blocked by the White House.

“The American people have a right to know whether the president − through his family − traded official acts for foreign dollars, whether the president is compromised and whether Joe Biden abused his power as president to impede or obstruct the investigation into Hunter Biden,” Johnson wrote in a Tuesday USA Today op-ed. “As we have done all along, House Republicans will continue to follow the facts where they lead.”

House investigators opened a probe into the Biden family in November 2022. They revealed Joe Biden received money from James and Hunter Biden. They also showed that nine additional Biden family members received payments from the family’s foreign business ventures, including two of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.

More evidence against Joe Biden can be found here.

Follow Wendell Husebø on “X” @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.