Fact check: these Republican House hearings are NOT an “impeachment inquiry”
This week House Republicans are holding public hearings which they’ve labeled an “impeachment inquiry” into President Joe Biden. The hearings are full of baseless conspiracy theories, empty rhetoric, and star witnesses whose testimony doesn’t line up with Republicans’ claims. But it gets even worse than that for House Republicans, because these hearings are not even an “impeachment inquiry.”
The Trump-era DOJ formally stated in January of 2020 that the House cannot hold an “impeachment inquiry” unless a formal vote is held authorizing such an inquiry. The DOJ hasn’t said anything since then to refute this. House Republicans have not challenged the DOJ’s position in court. Therefore the hearings that House Republicans are currently holding are not an “impeachment inquiry.” They’re just the same generic public hearings that the House routinely holds from time to time.
Yet the vast majority of the mainstream media pundit class – on the left, right and center – has spent today inaccurately referring to these hearings as an “impeachment inquiry.” This comes even after some major media outlets quietly acknowledged earlier this month that these hearings were not legally considered an “impeachment inquiry.”
Some major news outlets have tried to be more coy in their characterization of this week’s hearings. One reporter referred to them in a tweet as “impeachment happenings” (that’s not a real thing). Another reporter referred to the hearings as “more of an overview on impeachment inquiry” (that’s gibberish). But the media uniformly wants the public to believe that this week’s hearings are part of an impeachment process against President Joe Biden, when legally speaking, procedurally speaking, and practically speaking, these hearings are not part of any impeachment process.
So why is the media trying so hard to falsely sell this week’s hearings as being an impeachment inquiry? This comes down to what these things always come down to: ratings. House Republicans have been holding hearings on Joe and Hunter Biden throughout 2023. But the public has shown little interest, so the media hasn’t been able to get any ratings out of discussing those hearings. Now that House Republicans are holding the same old hearings, but falsely labeling them an impeachment inquiry, the media is seizing the opportunity to falsely sell this to the viewing public as indeed being an “impeachment inquiry” in the hope it’ll cause the public to take it more seriously.
In that sense the mainstream media (on the left, right, and center) is conspiring with House Republicans to falsely present this week’s generic hearings as if they were an “impeachment inquiry.” The media does not do this out of any desire to help the Republicans or get them elected. The media does this simply because it’s good for ratings – which is the only reason the media is in business, as far as the media is concerned.
If you believe that truth and accuracy matter, the most important thing you can do today is to push back against every member of the media and pundit class who falsely refers to today’s generic hearings as an “impeachment inquiry” or similar. That is simply a false claim aimed at ginning up a false story. As of now there is no impeachment process of any kind against President Biden. House Republicans are simply aiming to get the words “Biden” and “impeachment” into the same headline, for the sake of appearances. The media is being fully complicit in this dishonesty. The American public simply deserves better.
