The risks and prospects of impeaching Joe Biden 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) appears to be edging closer to the brink of impeaching President Joe Biden over unverified allegations of financial misconduct and influence peddling, but the Republican leader would be wise to take a step back. 

While there are legitimate questions surrounding Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, at this point, there is no hard evidence of wrongdoing that would warrant impeachment. In the absence of clear-cut proof, voters would perceive an impeachment as an overreach by House Republicans, and the GOP could pay a steep political price in next year’s elections as a result. 

Indeed, the last two impeached presidents saw their poll numbers increase immediately after the proceedings. One month before the 1998 midterms, the Republican-controlled House authorized their impeachment inquiry into former President Bill Clinton; in turn, that was the first midterm election in more than six decades where a president’s party gained congressional seats. Clinton’s strongest approval rating — 73 percent — came in December 1998, when the House was taking up the articles of impeachment against him, per Gallup polling. 

In more recent history, former President Donald Trump’s highest-ever approval rating — 47 percent — was recorded in February 2020, just days after the Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial, according to NBC News polling. Trump’s approval ticked up even higher among independent voters — to 51 percent — after previously having numbers in the low 30s. 

Not only did impeachment strengthen Trump’s position, it also eroded trust in the government. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Americans — including majorities of both parties — said that their level of trust in political institutions decreased because of Trump’s first impeachment, per FiveThirtyEight. 

While other factors — i.e., strong economies in both 1998 and pre-COVID-2020 — could very well have contributed to Clinton’s and Trump’s rising ratings, it’s also clear that both impeachments, which at the time were viewed as heavily partisan, played a role.  

These data lend credence to the concerns of some Republicans, particularly in the Senate, who worry that investigating and impeaching Biden during a presidential election year over unverified claims — at the expense of messaging on key issues — could backfire by turning off moderate voters. Many are also concerned that it would establish a dangerous precedent, whereby a House majority feels emboldened to impeach any president from an opposite party, simply on political grounds. 

“Staying focused on the future and not the past is in my view the best way to change the direction of the country and that’s to win an election,” Senate Republican whip John Thune (R-S.D.)  told reporters on Tuesday. 

Despite the high potential for political fallout, McCarthy may feel he has no choice but to forge ahead on impeachment, given the intense pressure he is facing from the increasingly influential far-right flank of the GOP.  

This consideration may have motivated McCarthy’s comments earlier last week when he said that the evidence against the president was “rising to the level of [an] impeachment inquiry.” The Speaker’s suggestion set off a firestorm in Washington D.C., prompting McCarthy to later clarify that he wasn’t announcing the beginning of an official inquiry yet, but rather confirming that the House Republican committee currently investigating Biden would continue its work. 

To be sure, there are a number of credible reasons why Congress’s ongoing investigations into the president and his son should continue. An FBI document that was made public this week alleges — based on a tip from a confidential informant — that President Biden may have received a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian energy company as vice president.  

In addition, two IRS supervisors-turned-whistleblowers told House lawmakers on Tuesday that Hunter Biden used his father as leverage to pressure a Chinese company into paying him. One testimony described a text message allegedly sent from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company, which read: “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” 

These revelations aren’t the smoking gun that Republicans like Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) have been looking for, but they also aren’t the nothing burger that many Democrats hoped for. The claims should continue to be investigated, but impeachment should only be pursued if clearcut, verified evidence of wrongdoing by the president emerges.  

If House Republicans overstep on impeachment — as their party did in 1998, and as Democrats did in 2019 — their overzealousness will come at a steep cost to their party’s political prospects and to voters’ trust in our political institutions. 

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to former President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is: “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”