‘I don’t think it’ll go to the floor’: Republicans doubt prospects of Biden impeachment effort, report says

Inquiry suffered major blow this week after indictment of FBI informant

House Republicans increasingly believe there is little chance of any impeachment vote resulting from the investigations into Joe Biden, according to reporting by Axios.

After a year of looking into the Biden family, little has been revealed regarding the alleged bribery and corruption of which the president, his son Hunter Biden, and his brother Jim Biden, have been accused.

“I don’t see it going anywhere substantive,” said one House Republican, adding that there “aren’t close to enough” GOP votes to impeach the president.

The lawmaker said there were “easily 40-50” Republicans who would likely vote against an impeachment of Mr Biden.

Republicans struggled to push through the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this month.

“I don’t think it’ll go to the floor. There are too many Republicans who will tell the speaker it won’t pass,” another GOP lawmaker told Axios.

Rep Don Bacon of Nebraska described the impeachment inquiry as “helpful” but said it has “not shown that a specific law was violated by the President as of yet”.

Senior staffers briefed the Republican Main Street Caucus weeks ago, two lawmakers told Axios, with the reaction of the group described as “healthy scepticism” about “both the legitimacy of high crimes and misdemeanours by the president and politics of impeachment”.

The inquiry into the Bidens suffered an embarrassing hit last week when FBI informant Alexander Smirnov was indicted over felony false statement and obstruction crimes for providing allegedly false information about the president and his son.

Mr Smirnov’s allegations were a key part of the Republican case against the Bidens.

Further, he admitted that Russian intelligence played a role in the claims about the business dealings of the president’s family members.

His evidence was originally hailed as crucial to the case against the Bidens but its significance is now being downplayed.