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The White House has been quietly preparing for the day when House Republicans finally file articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.
According to NBC News, the White House has assembled a growing team of attorneys, legislative aides and communications staffers to push back against a possible GOP-led impeachment inquiry regarding Biden’s alleged influence-peddling after Republicans say they have uncovered a tidal wave of evidence.
“Talk of the House beginning an impeachment inquiry has picked up after committees’ investigations have discovered alleged misconduct by then-Vice President Biden in his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings,” Newsmax added.
The war room reportedly has assembled at least two dozen attorneys and has been months in the making under the guise of the White House counsel’s office, NBC News noted. The report said that Biden’s team is preparing to vigorously push back with claims that the effort is the product of a partisan GOP-controlled House.
“Comparing this to past impeachments isn’t apples to apples or even apples to oranges; it’s apples to elephants,” a White House aide told the network. “Never in modern history has an impeachment been based on no evidence whatsoever.”
Republicans said the same thing about Democratic efforts to impeach then-President Donald Trump an unprecedented two times.
According to a source who spoke with NBC News, White House staff have dedicated the August recess to conducting research on GOP statements while fine-tuning both a communication strategy and a response team.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) indicated last week that the likelihood of an impeachment inquiry against President Biden was increasing. He described it as “a natural step forward” as Congress approaches the end of its summer recess, with House Republicans looking to broaden their investigative authority.
“If you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy told Fox News Channel. “That provides Congress the apex of legal power to get all the information they need.”
Newsmax added:
Biden’s team, hoping to make Republicans pay a political price for overreaching, have researched the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton to get guidance on how to mount an effective defense.
Defense attorney Richard Sauber and Russ Anello, the former staff director of the House Oversight Committee, are members of the Biden White House’s war room, NBC News reported.
Communications operative and presidential campaign veteran Ian Sams and the pro-Biden group Building Back Together’s former communications director Sharon Yang will be the team’s “public face,” NBC News reported.
Incoming White House counsel Ed Siskel, who worked in the Obama-era White House counsel’s office, soon will be added.
Last month, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) warned that members of the president’s family will likely be subpoenaed to provide testimony in its ongoing investigations.
“This is always going to end with the Bidens coming in front of the committee. We are going to subpoena the family. We know that this is going to end up in court when we subpoena the Bidens,” he told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
“So we’re putting together a case, and I think we’ve done that very well. We’ve shown the bank records,” he said.
“If I had subpoenaed Joe and Hunter Biden the first day I became chairman of the committee, it would have been tied up in court, and the judge would have eventually thrown it out,” the representative said.
“We have put together a case that I think would stand up in any court of law in America,” he said. “We want to talk to about three or four more associates first. We’ve been communicating with a couple of them.
“We’re trying to bring them in just like we did Devin Archer for a transcribed interview.,” the representative said. “If they don’t come in voluntarily, then they’ll be subpoenaed.
“It’s very difficult. You know how hard the Democrats tried to get Donald Trump. So this is very difficult,” he said.
