White House ends GOP’s unsuccessful impeachment saga: report

President Joe Biden on Monday declared House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer's (R-KY) impeachment probe against him effectively "over" by declining to testify before investigators, The Hill reports.

According to CNN, the Kentucky lawmaker "criticized Biden" in a statement "for declining to testify publicly and called on the president to answer questions that accompanied the hearing invitation."

Comer said, "It is unfortunate President Biden is unwilling to answer questions before the American people and refuses to answer the very simple, straightforward questions we included in the invitation," asking, "Why is it so difficult for the White House to answer those questions?"

READ MORE: Watchdog group alleges Comer negotiating book deal to 'turn a profit' from impeachment dud

The GOP leader's "statement did not address whether he plans to take any further steps now that Biden has declined," CNN notes.

"Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong," Biden special counsel Richard Sauber said in the letter, The Hill reports. "Yet rather than acknowledge this reality, your March 28, 2024, letter contains the same litany of false allegations that have been repeatedly debunked and refuted by the very witnesses you have called before your Committee and the many documents you have obtained. Your insistence on peddling these false and unsupported allegations despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear: The facts do not matter to you."

Last week, an ethics watchdog group accused the Kentucky congressman of monetizing the failed impeachment saga.

"As Representative Comer continues to hold hearings and attempts to build the case to impeach President Biden, the American people deserve to know the extent to which he is benefiting financially," the group wrote in a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics. "It is clear already that he has a political motive to impeach the President and it should be revealed if he has a financial motive as well."

READ MORE: Don’t have 'guts to do it': House Oversight Republican says Biden impeachment not 'going to happen'

Congressional Integrity Project executive director Kyle Herrig emphasized, "Recent reporting revealed that Representative Comer has been in talks with at least one publisher regarding a book on his impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Representative Comer and his Republican colleagues have spent the past 15 months relentlessly investigating the president and his family and failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden let alone anything impeachable."

The Hill's report is available at this link. CNN's report is here.