(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Once considered a reliable conservative, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., has continued to raise eyebrows among the GOP base due to his excessive support for scandal-prone President Joe Biden, Newsweek reported.
Specifically, the Freedom Caucus member is accused of blocking House Republican efforts to impeach Biden, insisting that Republicans need to wait until more details come out about the president’s corruption—especially in relation to his son Hunter.
“I think that we have three committees that are working very hard on uncovering evidence of Hunter Biden‘s wrongdoing,” he said in an appearance Wednesday on CNN’s The Lead.
For Buck, the mounds of evidence have so far failed to convince him that Joe Biden himself was involved in any of Hunter’s illicit dealings.
“They are looking to see if there is a connection with Joe Biden,” he said.
“If they reach that point where they could find evidence of a connection, fine,” he added. “I think that the Republicans will move forward with an impeachment inquiry.”
Buck was cautious to mince his words, not suggesting that Biden was innocent, per se, but that the smoking-gun evidence needed to persuade Democrats to join rank in finding Biden guilty of an impeachable offence had not yet been presented.
“Right now, I’m not convinced that that evidence exists,” he said. “And I’m not supporting an impeachment inquiry.”
Others argue that the evidence already has been made public and that Democrats who deny it are playing an obtuse game of political denialism as they wait to see if public opinion will force out the addled 80-year-old, who remains politically underwater as he has for much of his presidency.
🚨 Hunter Biden paid his father's phone bills, house repairs, and monthly expenses and told his daughter that he "paid for everything for this entire family for 30 years… But don't worry unlike Pop I won't make you give me half your salary."
Emails show Hunter and his business… pic.twitter.com/HPwk3bDXIe
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 29, 2023
Buck’s reasons for ignoring the evidentiary record remain unclear. However, his stance on Biden family corruption has created a good deal of distance between him and many of his fellow Republicans in the House.
For instance, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., recently accused the president of “weaponizing” the government.
“If you’re sitting in our position today, we would know none of this if Republicans had not taken the [House] majority,” he said in a recent Fox News appearance.
“We’ve only followed where the information has taken us,” he added. “But this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed.”
Others, however, have accused McCarthy of dragging his feet—including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who threatened this week to call a floor vote to oust McCarthy as speaker if he did not move more quickly to initiate impeachment proceedings.
Some, such as Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., a member of the House Oversight Committee, find themselves caught in the middle, supporting the process of impeachment investigations while cautious not to rush headlong into a politically precarious position that Democrats could use to their advantage, as they did in the 1998 election ahead of Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
“I believe that President Biden and his family are corrupt,” Foxx told Headline USA in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
However, “we have to prove that to the American people,” she added. “I do not think that it is right for us to prematurely go into an impeachment vote.”
Foxx noted that during the Watergate era, it was then-President Richard Nixon’s loss of support within his own party that forced his resignation while facing an imminent impeachment vote.
Likewise, in order to hold Biden and his son accountable, “We need the Democrats,” she said.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
