Giuliani wants to be lead counsel on Biden impeachment – as he awaits trial with Trump

Former NYC mayor says impeachment leaders ‘are wonderful guys, but this is my profession not theirs. I know how to question a lot better than they do’

Rudy Giuliani has said that he wants to be the lead counsel during the House Republicans impeachment efforts against President Joe Biden, even as the former New York mayor awaits a trial on charges alongside former President Donald Trump.

Appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Mr Giuliani, a former US attorney and Trump lawyer, claimed to know the case against Mr Biden better than anyone else. He also claimed the case could have been proved years ago, adding that no witnesses are needed as all the necessary evidence can be found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Mr Giuliani said that James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary chairman, “are wonderful guys, but this is my profession, not theirs. I know how to question a lot better than they do. This is what I do best”.

“This case could be proved without witnesses. Just with electronics and the hard drive. You could do it with videos, texts, emails. It’s a multimedia case that could be won by a moderately talented prosecutor,” he claimed. “The evidence is overwhelming.”

“I'm prepared to do the questioning if they got the guts for it,” Mr Giuliani told Mr Bannon.

“I will also send you some articles where I broke down a congressman on the witness stand and got him to confess. This is what I do best. I practised for a long time for it,” he added.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy endorsed the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden on Tuesday amid unsubstantiated allegations that the US president profited from his son’s overseas business dealings.

“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” Mr McCarthy said in a brief statement, declining to take questions.

Referring to Mr Comer’s preliminary investigation into the accusations against Mr Biden, the speaker said: “Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealers.

“Eyewitnesses have testified that the president joined on multiple phones and had multiple interactions, dinners that resulted in millions of dollars into his son and his son’s business partners.”

He claimed the allegations together “paint a picture of corruption” and vowed the House would “go wherever the evidence takes us”.

The forthcoming inquiry will be led by Mr Comer, Mr Jordan and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith.

The effort to impeach Mr Biden – seen in some quarters as a transparent bid for revenge over the dual impeachments suffered by his predecessor mr Trump – has been led by congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has already failed in the endeavour on at least six previous occasions since the Democrat took office in January 2021.

The Georgia representative has already filed House resolutions proposing to open impeachment inquiries into Mr Biden over a baseless Republican conspiracy theory concerning his dealings in Ukraine as vice president in 2016, his extension of the federal Covid-19 eviction moratorium, his handling of US-Mexico border security (twice), the US withdrawal of military personnel from Afghanistan and claims that he endangered American energy security by selling oil to foreign nations.

Randy Weber, Bob Gibbs, Lauren Boebert, Bill Posey, Louie Gohmert, Andy Ogles and Greg Steube have likewise all filed impeachment motions of their own against the president to the 117th and 118th Congress, all of which have simply been politely referred on to the House Judiciary Committee and never heard of again.

This time, the populist wing of the GOP embodied by Ms Greene is determined to haul Mr Biden and his troubled son over the coals on the question of the latter’s corporate interests and over whether the Biden administration’s Justice Department has intervened on the younger man’s behalf during the ongoing criminal case against him.

So far, no evidence has been brought forward to prove any wrongdoing.