WASHINGTON: Donald Trump wants to see President Joe Biden impeached, and the former president’s allies in Congress and his 2024 GOP presidential rivals are eager to join that fight as his own legal challenges mount.
Trump’s chief opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, this week said the House Republicans “are absolutely within their rights” to consider an impeachment inquiry against Biden. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, also running for president, said Republicans would be “justified to do it.” And House GOP leaders aligned with Trump are foreshadowing what’s ahead.
“House Republicans will leave no stone unturned,” said Rep. Elize Stefanik of New York, the fourth-ranking House GOP leader and a top Trump ally, who is sometimes mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick.
This week, the prospect of impeaching Biden over the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden, emerged from the far corners of the GOP’s right flank to the mainstream in the Republican Party.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Fox News that the House may open an impeachment inquiry into Biden, and expanded on his plans at a Tuesday press event at the Capitol.
Behind closed doors Wednesday, however, the Republican speaker told GOP colleagues it’s early in the impeachment process, and McCarthy acknowledged there’s still much that is unknown about Joe Biden and whether he had any awareness or involvement in his son’s business deals that would arise to an impeachable offense.
“The speaker went through what we know and what we don’t know,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, a seasoned lawmaker and committee chairman.
“There’s a lot we don’t know — we don’t know if any money went directly to President Biden or not,” Cole said, explaining the message to the House GOP. “That’s what they do the investigations about.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said McCarthy also told them if it comes to a Biden impeachment inquiry, he’s going to ask that “you be with me on this.”
Greene, a Trump ally backing impeachment, said no one rose during the private meeting to object.
By putting Biden on notice that the House is considering an inquiry, the Republicans are elevating a once rare congressional check on executive power — the formal impeachment charges over high crimes and misdemeanors — into yet another tool being wielded in party politics.
It’s a political escalation, urged on by Trump, after his own two impeachments. The prospect of a Biden impeachment inquiry also comes as Trump faces mounting legal cases, including a potential federal indictment in the investigation led by Special Counsel Jack Smith over his efforts to overturn the election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Trump is the only president in US history that has been twice impeached — first in 2019 over his phone call urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on the Bidens or risk losing US military aid, and again in 2021 in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn Biden’s election.
Now, as the Republican party’s frontrunner for the nomination to take on Biden in 2024, Trump has long seethed over his impeachments at the hands of House Democrats. McCarthy has suggested the Trump impeachments could be expunged, as proposed by Stefanik and Greene. But Trump wants Biden to face similar impeachment charges.
“They impeach me over a ‘perfect’ phone call, and they don’t impeach Biden,” Trump posted online in capital letters this week, calling the current president “corrupt.”
Last week, at a Fox News town hall in Iowa, Trump expressed similar complaints asking: “Why aren’t they impeaching Biden? ... Why isn’t he under impeachment?”
House Republicans in various committees are probing the Bidens and suggesting the president may have been aware or involved in his son Hunter Biden’s work, particularly when the younger Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
The Republicans in Congress point to testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who testified last week the Justice Department slow-walked their investigation into Bidens, a claim the agency rejects. The Republicans also publicly released what the FBI says is unverified information from a confidential informant alleging Burisma payments to the Bidens as bribes, though other documents show a top company official disputing any payments were made.
Hunter Biden had agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of tax evasion stemming from a federal investigation, but the deal unraveled Wednesday when a judge raised questions about it.
“I’ve seen enough. We need a special counsel who has jurisdiction over any and all Biden family investigations,” Chris Christie, another Trump rival in the 2024 race, said on social media.
The White House has declined to engage in specific questions about any House GOP impeachment inquiry against Biden.
“They can do whatever it is that they wish to do, but we’re going to stay focused,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this week, pointing to the “real priorities that the American families care about.”
Biden himself has repeatedly said that he does not talk with his son about his overseas business dealings.
As Hunter Biden appeared in court Wednesday, the press secretary issued a statement: “As we have said, the president, the first lady, they love their son, and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”
Not all Republicans are on board with the House’s plans to consider an impeachment inquiry, but those who object may face political retribution from Trump.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he understands House Republicans may be incentivized to launch an impeachment inquiry after Trump was impeached twice when Democrats had control of the chamber.
But the Kentucky Republican warned fellow Republicans of continuing down this path.
“Impeachment ought to be rare rather than common,” said McConnell, who has long endured Trump’s ire and hasn’t spoken to him since the month before the Capitol attack. “I think this is not good for the country when we have repeated impeachment.”
Trump this week singled out other Republican senators, including John Cornyn of Texas and Mitt Romney of Utah, who had expressed their reluctance to launch impeachment proceedings.
House Democrats have declared the effort to impeach Biden political extremism and signaled they will oppose it.
“I’m very well aware of how important it is to follow the facts and the evidence before you reach any conclusions — and the Republicans are doing the reverse,” said Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, a chief prosecutor in the House’s first impeachment of Trump in 2019.
“What they are talking about now is pure political retribution that is not based on facts and evidence,” he said, adding that’s “abusing the impeachment power of the Congress.”
Trump wants to see Biden impeached, and other Republicans are quick to pile on
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Trump wants to see Biden impeached, and other Republicans are quick to pile on
- Trump is the only president in US history that has been twice impeached — first in 2019 and again in 2021
Ukraine to evacuate more children from frontline villages
Around 110 children lived in the area affected
KYIV: Ukraine on Friday announced the mandatory evacuation of dozens of families with children from frontline villages in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russia’s troops have been grinding across the region in recent months, capturing a string of settlements, most of them completely destroyed in the fighting since Russia invaded in February 2022.
“I have decided to start a mandatory evacuation of families with children” from around two dozen frontline villages and settlements, Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.
Around 110 children lived in the area affected, he added.
“Children should live in peace and tranquility, not hide from shelling,” he said, urging parents to heed the order to leave.
The area is in the west of the Donetsk region, close to the internal border with Ukraine’s Dnipropretovsk region.
Russia in 2022 claimed to have annexed the Donetsk region, but has not asserted a formal claim to Dnipropretovsk.
The order to leave comes a day after officials in the northeastern Kharkiv region announced the evacuation of 267 children from several settlements there under threat of Russian attack.
Trump to visit disaster zones in North Carolina, California on first trip of second term
- The president is also heading to hurricane-battered western North Carolina
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is heading into the fifth day of his second term in office, striving to remake the traditional boundaries of Washington by asserting unprecedented executive power.
The president is also heading to hurricane-battered western North Carolina and wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles, using the first trip of his second administration to tour areas where politics has clouded the response to deadly disasters.
Kyiv says received bodies of 757 killed Ukrainian troops
- The exchange of prisoners and return of their remains is one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv
KYIV: Kyiv said Friday it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian troops killed in battle with Russian forces, in one of the largest repatriations since Russia invaded.
The exchange of prisoners and return of their remains is one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since the Kremlin mobilized its army in Ukraine in February 2022.
The repatriation announced by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian state agency, is the largest in months and underscores the high cost and intensity of fighting ahead of the war’s three-year anniversary.
“The bodies of 757 fallen defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters said in a post on social media.
It specified that 451 of the bodies were returned from the “Donetsk direction,” probably a reference to the battle for the mining and transport hub of Pokrovsk.
The city that once had around 60,000 residents has been devastated by months of Russian bombardments and is the Kremlin’s top military priority at the moment.
The statement also said 34 dead were returned from morgues inside Russia, where Kyiv last August mounted a shock offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region.
Friday’s repatriation is at least the fifth involving 500 or more Ukrainian bodies since October.
Military death tolls are state secrets both in Russia and Ukraine but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed last December that 43,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 370,000 had been wounded since 2022.
The total number is likely to be significantly higher.
Russia does not announce the return of its bodies or give up-to-date information on the numbers of its troops killed fighting in Ukraine.
EU says it is ready to ease sanctions on Syria
- The top EU diplomat said the EU would start by easing sanctions that are necessary to rebuild the country
ANKARA: The European Union’s foreign policy chief said the 27-member bloc is ready to ease sanctions on Syria, but added the move would be a gradual one contingent on the transitional Syrian government’s actions.
Speaking during a joint news conference in Ankara with Turkiye’s foreign minister on Friday, Kaja Kallas also said the EU was considering introducing a “fallback mechanism” that would allow it to reimpose sanctions if the situation in Syria worsens.
“If we see the steps of the Syrian leadership going to the right direction, then we are also willing to ease next level of sanctions,” she said. “We also want to have a fallback mechanism. If we see that the developments are going to the wrong direction, we are also putting the sanctions back.”
The top EU diplomat said the EU would start by easing sanctions that are necessary to rebuild the country that has been battered by more than a decade of civil war.
The plan to ease sanctions on Syria would be discussed at a EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday, Kallas said.
Taliban reject ICC arrest warrant as ‘politically motivated’
- The Taliban swept back to power in 2021 after ousting US-backed government in Afghanistan
- The Afghan rulers say the court should ‘not ignore the religious and national values of people’
KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban government said on Friday an arrest warrant sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its leaders was “politically motivated.”
It comes a day after the ICC chief prosecutor said he was seeking warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women — a crime against humanity.
“Like many other decisions of the (ICC), it is devoid of a fair legal basis, is a matter of double standards and is politically motivated,” said a statement from the Foreign Ministry posted on social media platform X.
“It is regrettable that this institution has turned a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by foreign forces and their domestic allies during the twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan.”
It said the court should “not attempt to impose a particular interpretation of human rights on the entire world and ignore the religious and national values of people of the rest of the world.”
The Taliban swept back to power in 2021 after ousting the American-backed government in a rapid but largely bloodless military takeover, imposing a severe interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, on the population and heavily restricting all aspects of women’s lives.
Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister Mohammad Nabi Omari, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, said the ICC “can’t scare us.”
“If these were fair and true courts, they should have brought America to the court, because it is America that has caused wars, the issues of the world are caused by America,” he said at an event in eastern Khost city attended by an AFP journalist.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should also be brought before the court over the country’s war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ attacks in October 2023.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister and three top Hamas leaders in November last year.
Afghanistan’s government claims it secures Afghan women’s rights under sharia, but many of its edicts are not followed in the rest of the Islamic world and have been condemned by Muslim leaders.
It is the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from education.
Women have been ordered to cover their hair and faces and wear all-covering Islamic dress, have been barred from parks and stopped from working in government offices.
ICC chief Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds.”
Khan said Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”
“Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable,” Khan said.
ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue the warrants, a process that could take weeks or even months.
The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its warrants — with mixed results.
In theory, this means that anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.
Khan warned he would soon be seeking additional arrest warrant applications for other Taliban officials.
