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GOP-Led House Committee Holds Biden Impeachment Inquiry Hearing; Senate, House at Odds on Funding With Two Days Left to Cut Deal. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 28, 2023 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[10:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Moments from now -- House Republicans, you see a live look right there, the House Oversight Committee -- House Republicans are about to kick off their first public hearing in their newly launched impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

Democrats preparing to blast them for focusing here while Congress is sprinting towards a government shutdown. Even some Republicans are speaking out against the probe. So where is the evidence?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, the debate was yesterday. What you want to know today is who won. Did anyone win? Did any Republican not named Donald Trump do anything to change the trajectory of the race? We have brand new answers to that question this morning.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: We are just two days from a government shutdown if Congress doesn't get it together. A Senate-approved bipartisan bill was DOA in the Republican-led House. What's the possible economic fallout from this?

We are following all these developments and more. I'm Sarah Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: (INAUDIBLE) Republicans have called -- even dismissed it as relying on an imagined history, the first hearing of their impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

BERMAN: So, for months, Republicans have been focused on Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings and they've tried to find ties that President Biden benefited from those deals, but they have not released any evidence of that so far.

SIDNER: Of course, this is all coming as Congress has just, as we mentioned, two days to negotiate a deal and avert a government shutdown.

We're joined now by CNN's Sara Murray and Jeremy Diamond, who is with us.

Sara, let me start with you. What are we expecting to learn during today's hearing? SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDNET: Well, I don't think we're going to necessarily learn any new facts at this point. We'll see. Maybe I could be surprised. But I think what they're really trying to do is sort of set the table for the basis of this impeachment inquiry.

And they put out a framework last night that gives you an idea of what they want to delve into in this initial hearing and sort of what the parameters are for this impeachment inquiry going forward. And it's essentially four different questions.

And the first three of these questions all pertain to the notion of whether now President Joe Biden, whether he provided access, whether he provided the perception of access, whether he took any official action because of foreign interests or foreign money related to Hunter Biden, other members of his family. And then the last question there is whether Joe Biden ever intervened at all in the ongoing criminal investigations into Hunter Biden.

And, again, as you guys have pointed out, these are not new questions for Republicans to be asking. James Comer, who is, of course, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has been asking these questions since Republicans got control of the gavels, and he still has not been able to provide any evidence that Joe Biden actually benefited from Hunter Biden's business dealings or from other family members' business dealings.

Republicans say this impeachment inquiry will allow them to get more documents, more information to better answer those questions. But you can bet we're going to see Democrats today just hammering Republicans over focusing on this impeachment inquiry rather than on the impending shutdown.

BOLDUAN: Sara, stick with us. Jeremy, how's the White House talking about this? They clearly are just missing it, but what is their response to this impeachment push right now?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they see a few different opportunities here, frankly, with this impeachment inquiry hearing, and that is, first of all, they believe that Republicans are going to get ahead of their skis, that they are going to go too far, and that they are going to face political blowback because the American public, they believe, is going to ultimately see this impeachment inquiry as a partisan process and not something that is going to yield any kind of substantive, incriminating evidence against the president.

They also see this as an opportunity to draw a stark contrast between what House Republicans are focused on with this impeachment inquiry.

BERMAN: The chair of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, is about to gavel in. Let's listen to what he says.

REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): Ms. Rashid Tlaib from Michigan to the committee. Congresswoman Tlaib has been a member of the House -- Congresswoman Tlaib has been a member of the House since 2019, and before that she served 15 years in the Michigan House of Representatives.

Ms. Tlaib is a familiar face to this committee, as she spent her first two terms on the Oversight Committee, Congresswoman Tlaib replaces Congresswoman Balint of Vermont, and I want to welcome back Congresswoman Tlaib.

I now recognize Ranking Member Raskin to welcome Congresswoman Tlaib.

[10:05:01]

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, thank you Chairman Comer for that very warm welcome extended to our colleague, Rashid Tlaib, the favorite daughter of Michigan and a veteran of this committee. And we're so thrilled and delighted that she's back to join us.

I yield back to you.

COMER: Gentlemen, yields back. I ask you to have this consent for Representative Jason Smith of the House Ways and Means Committee to be waived on the committee for today's hearing for the purposes of asking questions without objections awarded.

RASKIN: And, Mr. Chairman, I ask a unanimous consent that our colleague, Congressman Glenn Ivey from Maryland be permitted to join the committee and ask questions of the witnesses today.

COMER: Without objection, so ordered.

I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement.

Since assuming our Republican majority in January, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family's financial gain.

For years, President Biden has lied to the American people about his knowledge of and participation in his family's corrupt business schemes. At least ten times, Joe Biden lied to the American people that he never spoke to his family about their business dealings.

He lied by telling the American people that there was an absolute wall between his official government duties and his personal life. Let's be clear, there wasn't a wall. The door was wide open to those who purchased what a business associate described as the Biden brand.

Evidence reveals that then Vice President Joe Biden spoke, dined and developed relationships with his family's foreign business targets. These business targets include foreign oligarchs who sent millions of dollars to his family. It also includes a Chinese national who wired a quarter of a million dollars to his son. Joe Biden also lied to the American people about his family making money in China.

He continued to lie about it even when the House Oversight Committee uncovered bank wires, revealing how the Bidens received millions from Chinese companies with significant ties to Chinese intelligence and the Chinese Communist Party. Just this week, we uncovered two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals. This happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States, and Joe Biden's home is listed as the beneficiary address.

To-date, the House Oversight Committee has uncovered how the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies, most of which were created when Joe Biden was vice president, and raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.

We've also identified nine Biden family members who have participated in or benefited from these shady business schemes.

Now, what were the Bidens selling to make all this money? Joe Biden himself. Joe Biden is the brand, and Joe Biden showed up at least two dozen times with business targets and associate sending signals of access, influence, and power to those prepared to pay for it.

The American people demand accountability for this culture of corruption. They demand to know how these schemes have compromised President Biden and threaten our national security. They demand safeguards to be put in place to prevent public officials from selling access to their public office for private gain.

Under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, House Republicans have now opened an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. By opening an impeachment inquiry, our investigation is now focused on whether President Biden engaged in impeachable offenses under the U.S. Constitution. It empowers Congress, elected by the people, to continue providing the answers, transparency, and accountability that the American people demand and deserve.

In recent history, Democrats inflicted much damage on the credibility of Congressional investigations by peddling the Russian collusion hoax. But this committee, under this majority, will not pursue such witch hunts based on manufactured allegations, innuendo and no real evidence.

Today, the House Oversight Committee will examine over two dozen pieces of evidence revealing Joe Biden's corruption and abuse of public office. This includes emails, text messages, bank records, and testimony of Biden business associates. We will hear from legal and financial experts about this evidence and crimes that may have been committed as Joe Biden was sold around the world.

The House Oversight Committee, along with the committees on the Judiciary and Ways and Means, will continue to follow the money and the evidence to provide accountability so that Americans know their public offices are not for sale.

I now yield to Jason Smith, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, for his opening statement.

REP. JASON SMITH (R-MO): Thank you, Chairman Comer. Yesterday, the Ways and Means Committee released new documents.

BERMAN: Comer, what's happening now is that you are hearing from different committee chairs in the Oversight Committee.

[10:10:03]

We're going to dip back into this hearing when we hear from ranking member James Raskin in just a moment. We'll hear from him just as we heard from the chair, James Comer.

I want to bring in Elie Honig here, CNN senior legal analyst. And, counselor, I want to establish right now, since we're talking about an impeachment inquiry, we're not actually talking about the law. Impeachment, as we have learned now twice in the last few years, is what Congress decides it to be in terms of what is a high crime and misdemeanor.

But I am going to ask you a legal question here. What the committee is trying to do now, the Republicans on the committee, is suggest that as James Comer said at the very outset, there is a mountain of evidence that Joe Biden abused public office for financial gain. What evidence have they or would they need to produce to make that case? And how is it different, Elie, when we're talking about someone profiting off of a family name than the Trump Hotel that was down the block from the White House during President Trump's administration, or when President Trump, when he was in office, would travel to his golf club and talk about how nice it was. Where's the line?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Right, John. So, I think the question you pose is the exact question I would pose to Representative Comer. What proof do you have? The very first sentence out of his mouth was about this, quote, mountain of evidence. I'm sitting here thinking, okay, let's see it.

We keep hearing about how there are thousands of documents, financial records, bank records, emails, photographs. Okay, good, now we're having this hearing. Let's see it. Let's not rely on sleight of hand. If there is evidence of a connection between Joe Biden and the dealings of his son, Hunter Biden, let's see it.

They've been investigating this for months. Now, we're having a hearing. This is the time, this is the place. They say they have all these documents.

And the other thing I noticed, John, is there seems to be a little bit of a sleight of hand in the way Representative Comer was just talking about this. He said, and I wrote this down, that money was sent to the family, to the son, to the Bidens, to the Bidens and their associates. And that, I think, tells you where this gap exists. They haven't yet bridged that gap between the millions of dollars that Hunter Biden made from foreign entities and any connection financially or directly to Joe Biden. If they have that connection, good, let's see it.

BERMAN: And then one specific reference that Chairman Comer made was to these wires that were revealed overnight. There were a number of documents put out, but there were wires to Hunter Biden, who was, we believe, potentially living at Joe Biden's residence. And it was made during the time when Biden was out of office, Comer distinctly said, running for president.

That was between the time when he added official job as vice president and then president of the United States. That would be four years, where I imagine, again, if this were a court of law, the laws would apply differently.

HONIG: Yes. So, first of all, the use of that residence, Joe Biden's residence as an address for some of the transactions here, we need some context on that because there is evidence that Hunter Biden would use that address quite frequently. In fact, at times he was living there.

And with respect to any transfers, any bank records that may have come through, okay, let's see, is there evidence of a transfer of substantial amount of money from Hunter Biden over to an account that belongs to Joe Biden? And that's one of the big questions we have.

There's also the important question that you raised, John, of timing. When was Joe Biden doing any of these actions that we've heard about? Was it during his vice presidency or was it during those years in between the vice presidency and the presidency?

There's a bit of a constitutional question about whether a person can be impeached for something they did before they were in office. And I think we're going to hear from some of the constitutional scholars today about their differing views of that question.

I think Professor Charlie (ph) is going to say, sure, anything that a president has done is in play. And I think we have Professor Gerhardt, I saw there, I suspect he'll take the opposite view that a person can only be impeached for something they did while in office.

BOLDUAN: Elie, stick with us. Jim Jordan, chairman of House Judiciary, he's speaking now and we're going to continue in the amount of this before we head in. We will be heading back in in a second to hear from Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on this committee.

Sara Murray, let me bring you back in on this because there is -- yes, they're going to start -- they're going to -- there are legal questions that they're going to pose. There are mountains of evidence that James Comer says they're going to put out. But at its core, this is a political investigation. And do you see if it begins like this, they launch an impeachment inquiry, that it ends anywhere other than they will be moving towards impeachment of President Biden?

MURRAY: Well, look, I think that there is going to be a heavy lift for Republicans on not just House Oversight, but House Judiciary and Ways and Means to convince their other more moderate Republican colleagues that there is enough there to actually move for a full impeachment.

[10:15:01]

I think there are certainly moderate Republicans who are aware that despite what James Comer may say in these hearings and sort of the political bombast, that they don't really have the goods to back up what they're saying. They don't have this smoking gun at this point showing that Joe Biden somehow benefited from Hunter Biden's business dealings, showing that he was involved in the Hunter Biden criminal prosecution, obviously, all things Biden and the White House have denied. So, I do think that there is sort of an evidence barrier that Republicans need to get over and it's not clear if they can do this.

Again, this has been James Comer's baby since he got the gavel on House oversight. He has been digging and digging and digging for some kind of evidence that Joe Biden has personally benefited and he hasn't been able to find it at this point. I mean, we'll see if that changes now that they have moved into this impeachment inquiry, now that it seems like they're a little bit more bullish about trying to go more directly at the Biden family to try to get their bank records rather than sort of going in circles around them, going to banks, going to business associates and that kind of thing.

But, again, this first hearing really isn't about fact witnesses who are going to be able to speak directly to what Hunter Biden was doing, to Hunter Biden's finances. These are sort of expert witnesses, you know, a legal witness, a tax expert, a forensic accountant who can sort of raise concerns and say this transaction, you know, looks suspicious to me that Hunter Biden plea deal never should have gone forward and that kind of thing. But these are not the people who are doing business with Hunter Biden and can speak directly to what was going on at that time.

SIDNER: I want to -- thank you so much, Sara. Stay there. We're going to come back to you in just a second as we're watching this continue. Jim Jordan is still talking.

I want to go to Manu Raju. Manu, this impeachment hearing is happening. There was no vote on it because, you know, the Speaker McCarthy went forward with this and announced it. But I think he was doing it because he thought that would help him get a deal to stop the government from being shut down. How is it being seen there on the Hill?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it really was about the fact that he didn't have the votes to launch an impeachment inquiry. That was -- even though he had said just days prior to his announcement that, in fact, he would have a vote. Remember, he had been sharply critical of the way Speaker Pelosi had handled the first Trump impeachment. There was a vote in the House, Democratic-led House, to move forward with an impeachment inquiry. But that happened about a month in. And at the time, McCarthy was critical, he was critical in ever since. And then he said, I would move forward -- and if there's going to be an impeachment inquiry, there will be a vote on the House. Well, that didn't happen.

Back to you, Sara.

BOLDUAN: Yes, we're going to -- let's jump back in. Jamie Raskin is beginning to speak right now, the top Democrat on this committee.

RASKIN: -- 70 of the rules in manual which prescribe engaging in personalities towards the president. COMER: Well, considering this is an investigation of Joe Biden, I assume that his name is going to come up.

RASKIN: Right. But the House has not authorized us as an impeachment inquiry, so we're just operating with the general rules. And I think saying that the president lied is considered engaging in their personality. In fact, Section 370 says accusations that the president has committed a crime or even that the president has done something illegal are unparliamentary. And we're operating with the general rules of the House because the House has not authorized --

COMER: The speaker of the House has authorized the impeachment inquiry. It has been authorized.

RASKIN: Okay, all right.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Point of parliamentary inquiry.

COMER: The ranking member who -- what's -- Ms. Ocasio-Cortez?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: I believe changing of the rules must require a vote from the full House of Representatives, the rules of the committee.

COMER: The chair over rules the point of order. While articles of impeachment are not directly before this committee, we are looking at the potential wrongdoing of the president. Given the unique nature and subject matter of today's hearing topic, these words will not be ruled out of order.

So, Ranking Member Raskin, please proceed.

RASKIN: Thank you for clarifying, Mr. Chairman. We obviously have an honest disagreement about that.

All right, so let's get it straight. We're 62 hours away from shutting down the government of the United States of America, and Republicans are launching an impeachment drive based on a long, debunked and discredited lie.

No foreign enemies have ever been able to shut down the government of the United States, but now MAGA Republicans are about to do just that. But they don't want to cut off public services to the people and deny paychecks to more than a million service members without first launching the impeachment drive, even when they don't have a shred of evidence against President Biden for an impeachable offense.

And you think I'm being harsh? Here's what some Republicans have had to say over the last week about the actions of the Republicans. As they watch up close, quote, the dysfunction caucus at work, in the words of our GOP colleague from Nebraska, Don Bacon.

[10:20:08]

Clown show, foolishness, terribly misguided, stupidity, failure to lead, lunatics, disgraceful, new low, pathetic, enabling Chairman Xi, people that have serious issues, those folks don't have a plan, show just how broken they are, and individuals that just want to burn the whole place down.

Now, if I said any of these things, they'd probably take my words down, but these are Republicans talking about Republicans.

So, let's be clear, this isn't partisan warfare America is seeing today, it is chaotic infighting between Republicans and Republicans. It's MAGA versus extreme MAGA, as if anybody in the real world could tell the difference between the two. What a staggering failure of leadership. Speaker McCarthy's invertebrate appeasement of the most fanatical elements of his conference now threatens the well -being of every American.

Now, some people think the members of the GOP caucus aren't interested in anything logical. They just want to see the world burn, as Alfred Pennyworth put it in The Dark Night.

But I see a method in the madness. A week ago, Donald Trump posted a comment saying that a government shutdown, quote, is the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other patriots. You get it? To delay justice, Donald Trump would cut off paychecks to a couple million service members and federal workers and furlough more than a million workers and pay them later for having not worked.

They would halt food assistance to millions of moms and kids and keep NIH and my district from enrolling any more patients in life and death clinical research trials. Trump's convinced that if we shut the government down, his four criminal prosecutions on 91 different felony and misdemeanor charges will be defunded and delayed long enough to keep him from having to go before a jury of his peers before the 2024 election.

And like flying monkeys on a mission for the Wicked Witch of the West, Trump's followers in the House now carry his messages out to the world, shut down the government, shut down the prosecutions.

But the cult master has another command for his followers, which brings us here today. On August 27th, he posted this edict, either impeach the bum or fade into oblivion. They did it to us. Of course, the standard for impeachment is not whether they did it to us, but whether the president committed treason or bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

But the Constitution is irrelevant to them. What counts is what Donald Trump wants. As Republican Representative Ken Buck, a Freedom Caucus member, told CNN the other day, President Trump has gone on his social media account and said we should be impeaching President Biden.

Kevin McCarthy said we have an impeachment inquiry. You draw the conclusion. Directly or indirectly, this impeachment inquiry was a result of President Trump's pressure. So, we moved from a Trump- ordered government shutdown to a Trump-ordered impeachment process, and yet back in the reality -based world, the majority sits completely empty-handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke. In fact, we have had to slide awkwardly into a House impeachment process without the benefit of the floor vote that Speaker McCarthy insisted was absolutely imperative and necessary when Donald Trump was impeached.

In fact, they went to the Department of Justice and they got an OLC opinion saying, quote, no committee may undertake the momentous move from legislative oversight to impeachment without the delegation by the full House of such authority. OLC opinion, January 19th --

BERMAN: All right, that is the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin. We were just listening to him for the same amount of time we heard from the chairman, James Comer, moments ago.

Representative Raskin there was making the case largely that the Congress should be dealing with the shutdown now and not the impeachment inquiry. He also let off, though, with a procedural matter. Was it even within the House rules to be doing what they are doing because the House has never actually voted on launching an impeachment inquiry? And as Sara was just talking about with Manu, one of the reasons they didn't vote on it was it's not likely they had the votes to get it started if they put the vote to the full House.

I want to bring back our Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig right now to talk more about how much these rules matter and who has weighed in on them in the past, Elie.

HONIG: Yes, John. So, there's an interesting history here.

[10:25:00]

The question is does the House need to vote as the full House on a resolution in order to open an impeachment inquiry or can it just be declared unilaterally by the speaker of the House, by whichever party controls the House?

If we look back through history, there was a full House vote on a resolution to open an impeachment inquiry in connection with both the Nixon and then Bill Clinton matters. However, things changed in 2019, when then-Speaker Pelosi did essentially the same thing that Kevin McCarthy is now doing and she said, we're not going to take a full House vote. I'm going to declare an opening to an impeachment inquiry and that's it.

And, interestingly, at the time in 2019, the question, as Representative Raskin, was just saying, this legal question was posed to DOJ, which was then under the Trump administration, and DOJ came back and said, yes, we think you do need to take a complete vote before you can open an inquiry.

Now, that inquiry proceeded, nonetheless. The House essentially ignored DOJ's advice in that instance. But DOJ is on record, again, back in the Trump administration saying, you do need a full vote. So, now, Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker and he says, I'm doing the same thing Nancy Pelosi did. I'm just declaring that we're going to open an inquiry. But there is a lingering legal question and this could be something that comes before the courts of, do you need a full House vote on a resolution in order to proceed with an inquiry and to issue subpoenas or is it enough if the speaker just says so?

BOLDUAN: For the immediate -- the purpose of the immediate outcome, it will change nothing, this legal question, because this is going to -- this hearing is going to continue and the many more that they're going to be posing.

Elie, stick with us. We're seeing also Raskin has got a lot of props today that he's bringing in.

Sara Murray has been watching this as well. Sara, you had laid this out kind of in the lead up to it, the approach that Democrats are going to take to this, which is why are you all calling Republicans out for focusing here when the Congress and the House and infighting amongst Republicans is forcing the Congress to careen towards a government shutdown. And we're seeing Raskin's and doing just that right now.

MURRAY: Yes, I think that's going to be a big part of what we hear from Democrats today is that Republicans are focused on the wrong thing. I think there's also an urge from Republicans, like James Comer, to push this impeachment inquiry forward, even if the government does shut down. I mean, you can imagine that he's just going to get hammered by Democrats if he does move ahead with that strategy. So, I think that's a part of the Democratic strategy we're going to see.

I think the other part of this that we're going to see is their claim that this is all to sort of distract from Donald Trump's legal problems, of which he has many, by putting the focus on Joe Biden, his political opponent as well.

And then I think what we've just heard from Jamie Raskin is sort of getting into the notion that a lot of these allegations Republicans are making against Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are things that have come up before. They were things that Rudy Giuliani was peddling years ago during the Ukraine first to Donald Trump impeachment. And so I think there will be an effort by Democrats to say, look, there's nothing new to see here. There's no new evidence to really go over.

SIDNER: All right, thank you so much, Sara.

Let's go to Manu Raju, who is, as usual, running around on the Hill listening to voices just outside there.

I do want to ask you, this is all happening while we are literally 48 hours away or thereabouts from a government shutdown. Where are we on that? And are people talking about that more and concerned about this being a distraction?

RAJU: Well, the thing that the speaker has tried to convince some of those hard-line members who refuse to agree to a short-term spending bill to keep the government open is that he has argued that the impeachment inquiry could hit a wall if there is a government shutdown, saying that perhaps the federal agencies would not be able to respond to some of these inquiries and that if there is a shutdown.

But that argument simply has not worked with some of those members, those same members who have been demanding deeper spending cuts, who have been pushing for -- who have been saying that they simply will not agree to any short-term spending bill, whatsoever. So, that is the speaker's concern here. He had hoped that the fact that this impeachment inquiry is going forward would be able to convince some of those members to go along with his spending plans, as that simply isn't happening.

So, at the moment, the speaker just had a meeting behind closed doors with his members. There was a contentious back and forth between him and Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican, who has gone after the speaker and threatened the speaker's hold on power. But the speaker made clear that he wants to have a vote tomorrow on the Republican-only bill to keep the government open for a handful of weeks.

But there's a problem. He just simply does not have the votes to do it, because Democrats are opposed to the spending cuts and the border security measures that the speaker is proposing. And those same hard- line members whose the speaker is trying to convince to go along with it are saying, absolutely not. They think it should be deeper spending cuts and they also don't agree with keeping the government open for a short period of time.

[10:30:00]

So, that leaves things at a very likely prospect of a shutdown that would occur after 11 .59 PM on Saturday.