Key takeaways from the House GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry report

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Meantime, back in Washington today, three House Republican committees claimed that President Biden committed impeachable offenses, yet they stopped short of recommending impeachment itself.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Their 291-page report is a result of a year-and-a-half-long investigation. It contained few new details, but signals that the GOP effort to impeach Biden is now at an end.

  Congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins has been digging through that report, and she joins us now from Washington.

  Lisa, let's kick us off here with tell us, what does this report say?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Hi, Geoff and Amna.

  This report is really focused on allegations that the Biden family profited off of Joe Biden's position as vice president and, in specific, questions about whether Joe Biden himself profited and that he knew about the relationships that were being forged by his family.

  Now, really, the — at the center of this are two other Biden family members, James Biden, President Biden's brother, and then his son, Hunter Biden. They are known, they have said openly that they received millions of dollars in contracts with foreign businessmen for consulting, including some in China who were connected with the state energy complex there.

  But this report is an attempt to connect about 12 or 13 dots that Republicans said they found suspicious in testimony that they gathered over the last year-and-a-half. When you read through it, there are allegations that there were code words used to describe Joe Biden. But those are disputed.

  Others around Joe Biden say, no, those code words were not about Joe Biden. And in the end, there really is no direct evidence in this report and I didn't see anything new in it today that connects Joe Biden to the idea that there should be profiting off of his position as vice president.

  Nonetheless, Republicans say that the circumstantial evidence that they gathered was enough. Here is their conclusion from this report. They wrote it — wrote: "President Biden's participation in this conspiracy to enrich his family constitutes impeachable conduct."

  So then what are they doing? They wrote in the conclusion: "The committees present this information for evaluation and consideration of appropriate next steps."

  What does that mean? We don't know what it means. It means technically this seems to be at an end. Democrats are responding as if this is an end. This is from a White House spokeswoman — woman who talked to me today, wrote: "This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own Republican members distanced themselves from, as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories."

  And, Amna, speaking with Democrats, they say it's no coincidence that this report came out today after a year-and-a-half, the day that Biden is speaking to the convention.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, Lisa, tell us more about this evidence that Republicans insist that they have had all along. How do independent sources view that?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  We spoke with a constitutional law professor Loyola University.

  And she said that, in the end, this really is just circumstantial evidence.

• Jessica Levinson, Loyola Law School:

  Even if President Biden in some ways, kind of indirectly or vaguely made it easier for James and Hunter Biden to trade on the Biden name, I don't see in the report any of that rising to the level of the types of high crimes and misdemeanors that the founders envisioned when they put that impeachment clause in the Constitution.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Also notable, what's not in this report.

  One of the key witnesses early on that Republicans talked about was an FBI informant who was later indicted for lying about the Biden family. One other thing, Amna, the political reality here is Republicans just don't have the votes to pass impeachment on the House floor and they know it. So this is the end of this investigation, as it seems, for now.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That is our Lisa Desjardins reporting tonight from Washington.

  Lisa, thank you so much. Good to speak with you.