Newly chosen House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., gave the impeachment probe against President Biden a hopeful sign on Sunday, nodding to what he labeled as the House Republican’s constitutional responsibility to pursue the truth where it may lead.
“We’re the rule of law team. We don’t use this for political partisan games like the Democrats have done and did against Donald Trump twice. We are going to follow the law and follow the Constitution. I think we have a suspicion of where that may lead, but we’re going to let the evidence speak for itself,” he told Fox News.
“I look forward to rolling that out over the coming days and weeks and letting the American people see exactly why we’re taking the next steps and where it’s headed.”
Responding to whether House Republicans plan to subpoena Hunter Biden during the investigation, Johnson said he is considering the option. Still, he has yet to make a decision.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News in September that the President’s son would be subpoenaed, but only when the time was right.
“The one thing the American public has to understand is there’s a strategy behind everything. We only follow facts. Hunter Biden will get subpoenaed, but when is an appropriate time? Do you do it because television wants it, or do you do it around the facts and the timing?” McCarthy had said at the time.
McCarthy specifically stated that bank records would be needed in order to know which questions to ask Hunter, adding, “Just to subpoena Hunter Biden because you want to fundraise, or you want to do something, that’s not how we’re going to run an investigation.”
Johnson said Sunday that House Republicans are working on putting together evidence as they have done, and the work is far from over.
“We’re trying to move forward on some of this very aggressively. The American people are owed these answers,” he said.
“And I think our suspicions about all this, the evidence we’ve gathered so far, affirm what many of us feared may be the worst. As Jamie Comer says, ‘Bank records don’t lie.’ We already have a lot of this evidence. The dots are being connected, and we’ll see where it leads.”
The new House Speaker also discussed support for Israel, antisemitism erupting on college campuses across the U.S., and government spending, including the November 17 budget deadline, suggesting he would be open to a short-term stopgap funding measure through January 15.
“I’ve talked to my colleagues about this in the speaker’s race. I mentioned that I would favor, for purposes of discussion to build consensus around, if there indeed has to be a stopgap funding measure, that we would do that until January 15. And the reason for that is it gets us beyond the end of the year push,” he said.
“And oftentimes, the Senate tries to jam the House and force an omnibus spending bill,” he continued. “We’re not doing that here anymore; we have single-subject bills in our separate appropriations bills, so pushing that into January would assist us in that endeavor.”