House Republicans have long promised to probe the Biden administration on a variety of matters, including the business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden.
That investigation has already begun after Republican Representative James Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen seeking information about the Biden family’s financial affairs.
More House investigations are expected into matters including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the southern border and others.
Those GOP-led probes are now coupled with a DOJ investigation into classified documents found at Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., and his Delaware home.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that Robert Hur will serve as special counsel to investigate the matter, adding to the scrutiny the White House is facing.
Political scientists who spoke to Newsweek said that while oversight of the administration was of major importance, Biden will be under pressure as the third year of his term begins.
Good Reasons for Oversight
Republicans in the House are set to deliver on long-promised investigations into the Biden administration now that they have control of key committees. Those probes could prove a major headache for the administration.
“House Republicans have good reasons to make oversight and investigations a central focus of their agenda for the 118th Congress,” Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia, in Canada, told Newsweek.
“With Democrats in control of the Senate and presidency, they can pass signature bills through the House, but such bills will have no chance of becoming law,” he said.
“A normal role for a single-chamber majority party is to use investigations to keep the opposition honest and help develop the case that the party will make to the voters in the next election campaign,” Quirk went on.
He said that there are some aspects of the Biden administration that Republicans “could profitably investigate—the failed management of the refugee problem at the Mexican border, the disorderly and calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the massive spending that likely added to inflationary pressures, and various controversial policies on crime, race, gender, and culture.”
“If undertaken competently and responsibly, there would be political benefits for the party, and perhaps some advantages for governing, from such investigations,” Quirk said.
Republicans’ Payback
While there are real issues that could benefit from congressional oversight, Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office, previously described the probe into Hunter Biden as “politically-motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories.”
Quirk told Newsweek that House Republicans “have been captured by a radicalized base that thinks the proliferating investigations of Donald Trump have been a giant ‘witch hunt,’ and wants payback in kind.”
“The Republicans hope to find matters of corruption and criminality—evidence that could lead to Biden’s impeachment, or even ‘put him in jail.’ Until recently, the travails of Hunter Biden seemed their best chance—even though they have been trying to implicate Joe Biden in some related wrongdoing for several years, without success.” he said.
Keeping His Head Above Water
Speculation has continued to mount about Biden’s political future with the next presidential election more than a year away. Republicans control the House at least until elections in 2024, potentially complicating Biden’s path to re-election.
“Biden is going to spend the next two years trying desperately to keep his head above water,” Thomas Gift, founding director of University College London’s Centre on U.S. Politics, told Newsweek.
“From probes into Hunter Biden, to the U.S.-Mexico border crisis, to the origins of COVID-19, Biden’s only goal will be to maximize damage control and limit political fallout,” he said.
The Special Counsel
The newly-appointed special counsel adds an extra dimension to the scrutiny of Biden. Former President Trump is also facing an investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith over his handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Some of Biden’s political opponents have already begun to compare the two investigations.
“The DOJ’s announcement of a special counsel into Biden’s handling of classified materials adds one more weight around his neck,” Gift told Newsweek.
“It’s the last thing this White House needed as it prepares for a long winter of defending itself against accusations of wrongdoing from a GOP desperate to give the president a bloody nose,” he said.
Risk to Republicans
While the special counsel investigates the matter, it’s also possible that Republicans could start their own probe into the classified documents. Quirk told Newsweek that could be a mistake for the GOP.
“From what we know now, there obviously has been some negligence or incompetence, at least, in the handling of those documents,” he said.
“It is important that the Special Counsel get to the bottom of it. But there is so far no evidence of direct responsibility, let alone criminal intent, on Biden’s part. If House Republicans launch a high-profile investigation into Biden’s classified documents, they are likely to end up with little to show for it,” Quirk said.
Quirk added that House Republicans “would do more for their party’s prospects by endeavoring to disprove the frequent criticism that they have no interest in governing.”
“If they devote the next two years to the pursuit of imagined corruption and criminality in the Biden presidency, and fail to find it, they will do their own party more harm than they do to Biden and the Democrats,” he said.
