Biden impeachment saga creates a wild new political twist in an unprecedented

CNN
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By opening an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy unleashed an unpredictable and treacherous new political force into what is already the most abnormal election of modern times.

McCarthy effectively set up partisan counterprogramming to the looming criminal trials of his patron, former President Donald Trump, who’s the front-runner for the GOP nomination to take on Biden.

The key question heading into the third impeachment effort in three and a half years should be whether this attempt to effectively reverse a democratic election by ousting Biden is justified. The GOP failure so far to provide much more than innuendo – that Biden corruptly used his power while vice president to profit from his son Hunter’s business ventures – suggests it is not.

There is a crazed sense of irony and history coming full circle this week in Washington.

Trump was impeached the first time for effectively using presidential power and the prospect of military aid to try to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate a criminal investigation into Biden, his future opponent in a presidential election. Now, his proxies in the House GOP are effectively weaponizing an impeachment inquiry of Biden to try to again destroy Trump’s potential opponent in the next presidential election.

And if Trump wins back the White House, Zelensky may find that the 47th president’s revenge for his failure to act the first time is a cut off of military aid Ukraine needs to remain a sovereign nation after an invasion by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has praised.

That is not to say that Hunter Biden did not create a perception of a conflict of interest by earning millions of dollars in places like Ukraine and China while his father had a large role in those foreign policy portfolios in the Obama administration. Some of Joe Biden’s own statements on his son’s activity are less than candid. And Republicans have established that Hunter Biden flew on Air Force Two and met foreign business associates on his father’s foreign trips. Then-Vice President Biden attended two dinners with his son and his business associates in Washington, DC, although one of Hunter’s associates testified that no business was discussed. Still, there was always the possibility that Hunter Biden’s activity could embarrass his father politically or be seen as an attempt to peddle access.

The White House insists that the president…