House Republicans have settled on bribery as the centerpiece of their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden – although they still haven't found the evidence they hope to find.
GOP lawmakers are hoping the impeachment inquiry will give them the ability to uncover evidence of a "pay-to-play" bribery scheme involving Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine, but for now they concede they've got a frame but haven't completed their masterpiece, reported The Messenger.
“We have this entire picture getting painted, and it’s more than just a bunch of dots connected," said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). "It’s that we’re seeing the picture form but we still have some things to fill in, and so we’ve got to know where’d the money go? How was any of the money used, whether it went directly to Joe or not, and then figure out any other information that we can get about why.”
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GOP chairmen have pored over documents and interviewed witnesses before their committees to prove the Bidens personally benefitted from their White House ties when Hunter Biden was paid by the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and a Chinese energy company, but so far their evidence is mostly conjecture.
“That money was coming from foreign countries,” said Roy, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “The vice president [Biden] and then president [Barack Obama] was then lying about his knowledge about it. We know that to be true.”
A top House conservative lawmaker who asked for anonymity agreed there was "a mountain of evidence that Biden was on the take," and while no evidence has been found so far to show Biden received any of the money that came through his son, Republicans seem to think they've found enough to politically damage the White House.
“They don’t need the fire,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “They feel there is enough smoke to move forward and cause political problems.”
