(Washington) Le président américain Joe Biden a déclaré mercredi « ne pas se focaliser » sur l’enquête en destitution menée par l’opposition républicaine au Congrès, tandis que sa porte-parole Karine Jean-Pierre a affirmé qu’il n’avait « rien fait de mal ».
« Je ne sais pas vraiment pourquoi, mais ils savaient qu’ils voulaient me destituer », a déclaré M. Biden à propos de l’initiative des républicains. « Je me lève tous les jours […] without focusing on impeachment. I have a job to do. I have to deal with the issues that affect the American people every day,” he said at a private fundraising event.
Republicans in the House of Representatives accuse the Democratic leader of having “lied” to the American people about his involvement in his son’s controversial affairs abroad.
Biden’s brief reaction was his first public comment on the matter since Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy authorized the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday.
Asked about this investigation a little earlier on Wednesday, Joe Biden’s spokesperson had stronger words.
“They found no evidence, none, that he did anything wrong. The president did nothing wrong,” she said during the daily White House press briefing.
Hunter Biden, the fifty-year-old son of the Democratic president, has become a favorite target of the American right.
They accuse him in particular of having made dubious deals in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017), taking advantage of his father’s networks and name.
The opening of impeachment proceedings had been demanded for months by the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party.
The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress can impeach the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The Democrats respond that these right-wing efforts are only smokescreens used to hide the legal troubles that are piling up for Donald Trump, indicted four times in less than six months.
Never has a president been impeached in American history. Three were impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. But all were ultimately acquitted.
Richard Nixon preferred to resign in 1974 to avoid certain impeachment by Congress due to the Watergate scandal.
