Republicans’ longshot attempt to impeach President Joe Biden got off to a rocky start Thursday, with their star witness, legal expert Jonathan Turley, outright saying he doesn’t see any evidence to support impeachment.
“I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment,” he testified.
Turley, a Fox News legal analyst and D.C. lawyer who argued against Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment, was called on by House Republicans to testify in the first hearing of an inquiry into whether Biden should be impeached. Republicans have been desperately searching for evidence of wrongdoing since well before Biden was elected, and the inquiry gives them the ability to obtain materials like bank records.
While he conceded there was no evidence to support impeachment, Turley did say that he believed the House had “passed the threshold” for holding an inquiry.
Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, one of the GOP’s impeachment witnesses, says: “I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment… But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry.” pic.twitter.com/x3cfYKwr5o
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 28, 2023
He speculated that information could emerge if an official impeachment inquiry was launched. This, he said, should be enough for Republicans to launch an official probe into the president.
The less-than-convincing comment was seized on by the Biden campaign, which shared a video of the quote to its social channels.
Impeachment talks have swirled for nearly a year, with a cohort of Republicans centering their claims around Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings and so-far-unsubstantiated suspicions that his father engaged in corruption and abuse of public office.
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