Former Democratic senator Claire McCaskill said Republicans investigating President Joe Biden for his role in foreign business dealings with his son Hunter are going after a "father for loving his son."
"[Republicans] are going to try to indict a father for loving his son, who has been addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, without evidence of the father doing anything other than loving that son," McCaskill told MSNBC on Wednesday. "And that, I think, doesn’t fly with most of the American people."
McCaskill added that there is "no evidence" that Biden is involved in "nefarious" business dealings.
She said that a "small, calcified circle of the Trumpers" are the ones who "want to believe that somehow Joe Biden was involved in nefarious dealings."
The comments come despite House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) saying this week that Republican investigations into foreign business dealings by the Biden family are "rising to the level of impeachment inquiry."
"If you’re sitting in our position today, we would know none of this if Republicans had not taken the majority. We've only followed where the information has taken us," McCarthy told Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday. "This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed."
He added later that "this is gonna rise to an impeachment inquiry the way the Constitution tells us to do this."
McCarthy detailed findings made by the House, including that 16 of 17 payments made from Romania to the Biden family's shell companies were made while Biden was vice president, and that the family has taken Chinese money despite denials from the president.
A plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Department of Justice fell through on Wednesday. Federal judge Maryellen Noreika rejected the deal and told both prosecutors and Biden's legal team to craft a new one.
The original deal would have allowed Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax crimes and receive immunity on a broad range of criminal charges, all while avoiding jail time.