THE Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy said today that he is in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry against Democratic US President Joe Biden.

“I am directing committees of our House to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy told reporters, saying the US president had “lied” to the American people about the controversial affairs of his son (Hunter Biden ) abroad.

Hunter Biden, the 53-year-old son of the Democratic president, has become a favorite target of the American right. He is accused of having transactions of dubious legality in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president (2009-2017), capitalizing on his father’s network and name.

According to the US Constitution, Congress can impeach the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The initiation of the impeachment process against the American president was requested for months by the “Trump” wing of the Republican party in Congress, with which the leader of the majority in the House of Representatives had to make many compromises to secure the presidency in January.

Several moderate GOP elected officials, however, are opposed to starting that investigation.

Democrats counter that these efforts by the American right are nothing more than a pretext to turn the spotlight away from the legal adventures of Donald Trump, who has faced four impeachments in less than six months.

If a motion of impeachment passes the US House and reaches the Senate, there it needs a two-thirds majority to pass.

This has never happened to a sitting president in American history. Three US presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. In none of these cases did the impeachment motion secure the required majority.

Richard Nixon chose to resign in 1974 to avoid certain impeachment by Congress due to his involvement in the Watergate scandal.