House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday lectured an Associated Press reporter who claimed that Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden "without evidence."
"What an impeachment inquiry is to do is to get answers to questions," McCarthy told AP reporter Farnoush Amiri. "Are you concerned about all the stuff that was just recently learned? Do you have any concern?"
The exchange came two days after Amiri wrote that "House Republicans have aggressively investigated Biden and his son, claiming without evidence that they engaged in an influence-peddling scheme."
McCarthy proceeded to list numerous pieces of evidence that Hunter Biden used his proximity to his father as a way to profit in his business dealings. Last month, Hunter Biden's former business partner Devon Archer testified that the president had dinner with an executive from the Ukrainian energy firm that was paying his son.
The speaker also brought up the evidence released by the House Oversight Committee days after Archer's testimony. It revealed that, during Joe Biden's vice presidency, a Russian oligarch paid $3.5 million into a shell company associated with Hunter Biden. Additionally, a Kazakhstani oligarch wired the president's son $142,300, the cost of a sports car he purchased the next day, the committee revealed.
Members of the media have run cover for the Biden family since allegations of corruption and influence-peddling first surfaced in 2020. When the New York Post broke the story on Hunter Biden's laptop, several outlets parroted the claims of former intelligence officials who called the story Russian disinformation.