What happened during the first hearing of the Biden impeachment inquiry

Amna Nawaz:

For more perspective on today's impeachment hearing and the legal basis for the inquiry, we're joined by Frank Bowman. He's professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump."

Professor Bowman, welcome, and thanks for joining us.

I want to begin with your reaction to that impeachment hearing today. What were some of the key takeaways for you? What new information did you learn?

Frank Bowman, University of Missouri: Well, regrettably, very little.

I think it's certainly true to say that no impeachment inquiry of an American — of a U.S. president should begin unless there is at least significant proof that the president did engage in some sort of wrongdoing. And that's been the case in every prior presidential impeachment.

The difficulty, I think, for the Republicans is, on the one hand, they have the advantage of dealing with Hunter Biden, the president's son. And I think the one uncontested point that everybody can agree upon is that Hunter Biden has spent his entire life being in the profession of being the son of Joe Biden, in the sense that he's gained a lot of advantages, in terms of getting jobs and later on in his life inducing people to invest in his companies by virtue of the fact his last name is Biden.

No doubt about that. But that's not a crime, even as to Hunter Biden. It's certainly not an impeachable offense as to Joe Biden without a good deal more.

And the problem is that the Republicans launched this impeachment investigation without any material evidence that President Biden has done anything that's either criminal or impeachable. And I think it's worth remembering that we don't come into this inquiry about Hunter and his relationship with his father anew, as if this is suddenly a new thing.

This is something that's been investigated by multiple authorities since 2018. David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware and now special counsel, has been investigating Hunter Biden since then. A Senate committee investigated Biden and Burisma in 2020 and issued a report. The House has been investigating all of this since the beginning of this year.

And so far, although we still know that Hunter Biden has been trading on his father's name, they have got no evidence, and none was presented today.

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