The White House News

The White House on Friday responded to a flurry of subpoenas sent out by House Republicans by arguing that the impeachment inquiry into President Biden is unconstitutional, and amounts to “Congressional harassment” for political purposes.

“The subpoenas and interview requests purport to be in furtherance of what you have characterized as an ‘impeachment inquiry,’ even though no such inquiry has been authorized by the House of Representatives,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

“Indeed, you appear so determined to impeach the President that you have misrepresented the facts, ignored the overwhelming evidence disproving your claims, and repeatedly shifted the rationale for your ‘inquiry,’” Sauber said.

The House GOP inquiry is based largely on the business dealings of Biden’s family, namely Hunter Biden and James Biden, and whether the president improperly benefited from them or aided them while he was vice president. Republicans are also probing the tax crimes prosecution of Hunter Biden, which whistleblowers from the IRS said was improperly slow-walked.

House Republicans sent numerous subpoenas in connection to those probes — including to Hunter Biden and James Biden, in addition to Biden administration officials. 

The committees have been investigating Biden all year, but the stakes increased after ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) unilaterally said in September that the various probes would be under the umbrella of an impeachment inquiry, in hopes of putting more legal weight behind their requests.

But he authorized the probe without a House vote — despite previously signaling he would hold one.

“You also claim the mantle of an ‘impeachment inquiry’ knowing full well that the Constitution requires that the full House authorize an impeachment inquiry before a committee may utilize compulsory process pursuant to the impeachment power—a step the Republican House Majority has so far refused to take,” Sauber said in the letter to Jordan and Comer.

However, other legal experts disagree — and House Republicans are not the first to start an impeachment inquiry without holding a vote. House Democrats and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did the same in 2019 ahead of the first impeachment of former President Trump, before eventually formalizing the inquiry with a vote on a House resolution.

Sauber in his letter referenced a White House Office of Legal Counsel opinion under Trump from 2020 that said a House resolution “is a constitutionally required step before a committee may exercise compulsory process in aid of the House’s ‘sole Power of Impeachment.’”

He also pointed to previous statements from new Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) saying that the impeachment inquiry into Trump starting without a vote was “unprecedented and dangerous” — and referenced a recent report from The Washington Post that said Johnson had privately signaled there was not yet enough evidence to initiate formal impeachment proceedings against Biden.

But in a statement released this week, Johnson said that the impeachment investigation by Comer and Jordan was moving “toward an inflection point,” and that investigators have his ”full and unwavering support.”

Still, the White House made clear that they see the impeachment inquiry as a method to advance partisan political concerns. 

“Congressional harassment of the President to score political points is precisely the type of conduct that the Constitution and its separation of powers was meant to prevent,” Sauber said in the letter.

“For all these reasons, you should reconsider your current course of action and withdraw these subpoenas and demands for interviews. If you do in fact have legitimate requests for information within the White House pursuant to an appropriate oversight inquiry, please contact the undersigned so that the constitutionally approved processes can be implemented,” Sauber later said.

Comer appeared unmoved by the White House letter.

“If President Biden has nothing to hide, then he should make his current and former staff available to testify before Congress about his mishandling of classified documents,” Comer said in the statement. “Our investigation has unearthed new facts that contradict the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s narrative of the events. Additionally, we need to know if these classified materials aided the Bidens’ global influence peddling enterprise that brought in tens of millions for the Bidens and their associates. Our investigation reveals that Joe Biden lied repeatedly to the American people about his knowledge of, participation in, and benefit from his family’s shady business dealings around the world, including with adversaries like China.”

Comer then charged: “President Biden and this White House are seeking to obstruct our investigation at every turn. We are not deterred by this obstruction and will continue to follow the facts and hold President Biden accountable to the American people.”

The Judiciary Committee responded to the letter in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter..

“What’s this response tell you? The White House is TERRIFIED of what we’re uncovering with our impeachment inquiry. Won’t stop us from getting you the TRUTH,” it posted.

Updated at 4:19 p.m.

President Biden this week again called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator,” despite touting “positive steps” between the two nations after key talks with his Beijing counterpart in San Francisco. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was caught on camera reacting to Biden’s remarks. 

“After today, would you still refer to President Xi as a dictator?” one reporter asked the president at a press conference in California on Wednesday, referring to similar remarks Biden made earlier this year. 

“Look, he is,” Biden said. “He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that is based on a form of government totally different than ours.” 

Video of Blinken’s visible reaction to Biden’s soundbite is making the rounds on social media amid concerns about heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing. 

Earlier this year, Blinken appeared to back Biden’s use of the term to describe the Chinese leader. Asked about the remark in June, Blinken said that Biden “speaks for all of us.”

Biden also said in June that he didn’t think the comment had “had any real consequence.”

On Wednesday, Biden touted cooperation between the two countries.

“I welcome the positive steps we’ve taken today,” Biden said.

“We’re talking to our competitors and just talking, just being blunt with one another, so there’s no misunderstanding, as a key element to maintaining global stability and delivering for the American people.” 

A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, though, told reporters Thursday that “this statement is extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation,” according to a Reuters report. The spokesperson reportedly did not mention Biden by name.

Biden met with Xi on the sidelines of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco, their first face-to-face meeting in nearly a year. The meeting comes amid heightened tensions throughout the Indo-Pacific.

The House Financial Services Committee plans to open an investigation into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in response to recent reports that the banking regulator fostered a toxic work environment plagued by sexual harassment and misogyny.

The investigation will focus on the allegations of “widespread and entrenched misconduct and toxic work environment,” as well as the potential impact on “the safety and soundness of the banking system,” the top Republican members on the panel announced on Friday.

In a letter to FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg, Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Subcommittee Chairmen Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) and Andy Barr (R-Ky.) expressed concerns about the agency’s ability to tackle the reported workplace problems.

“Because ‘the agency’s problems stretch back more than a decade and have persisted through changes in leadership, administrations and internal investigations,’ we are concerned the FDIC, under your leadership, lacks the ability to address the problems,” the lawmakers said.

“Our concern is underscored by your nearly 20-year tenure in all aspects of leadership and management at the FDIC, including serving twice as Chairman,” they added. “It has failed to instill the confidence the public needs to know their banking system is and will be safe and secure in the future.”

A pair of reports from the Wall Street Journal this week detailed employee complaints about a sexualized, boys club culture that drove women to leave the agency and raised concerns about Gruenberg’s management.

The FDIC chair appeared before both the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the House Financial Services Committee this week for unrelated oversight hearings. However, he faced a grilling from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over the recent revelations.

After initially saying at Wednesday’s House hearing that he had never been investigated for inappropriate conduct during his time at the FDIC, Gruenberg corrected his testimony to note that he had previously been investigated in 2008.

“Chairman Gruenberg, the viability of your leadership is in question,” McHenry, Huizenga and Barr said in Friday’s letter. “Notwithstanding the toxic environment over which you presided in some leadership capacity over the last 18 years, your conflicting testimony in this week’s hearing before the Committee was alarming.”

The FDIC was thrust into the spotlight earlier this year after a series of high-profile bank failures prompted questions about the agency’s oversight capabilities. In an April report on the failure of Signature Bank, the FDIC noted that staffing challenges had impacted the quality and timeliness of its supervision of the bank.

The trio of Republican lawmakers highlighted the report on Friday, noting that it “did not consider how the longstanding toxic FDIC culture inhibits employee retention.”

“By ignoring or choosing to remain silent about workplace misconduct at the FDIC, your leadership may have contributed to the financial instability and threats to financial security of Americans that were observed in March,” the lawmakers added.

Vice President Harris recently shared the advice she gave to her stepson and his new wife after their wedding.

“There were a couple of pieces,” she told People magazine. “One of them was, ‘Pay attention to your marriage. Pay attention to it and be purposeful and intentional about nurturing it.'”

“I gave them a piece of advice, which is that at the end of every day, find some way to check in, no matter how tired you are or how many miles apart you may be, even if it’s just at the end of the day, and say ‘I love you,’” Harris added.

Harris was an officiant at stepson Cole Emhoff’s Oct. 14 wedding to Greenley Littlejohn, according to People. Cole’s father is Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, whom she met on a blind date in 2014. Cole is one of two children Emhoff has from his previous marriage. 

“It was so wonderful that the kids asked me to do it,” Harris told People. “For us, we think of marriage as being not just between these two people, but the coming together of families. So it was very much with that spirit that we all participated.”

Her stepchildren refer to Harris, the first woman vice president, as “Momala.” She even has the moniker in the biography portion of her official account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.