Republicans Lay Out Biden Investigations, but Democrat-Aligned Groups Promise Counteroffensive

Another group, the Congressional Integrity Project, announced Wednesday that it intended to launch a multimillion-dollar “war room” to undermine investigations from the House. People involved in that initiative, which was first reported by Politico, have previously worked with Mr. Brock’s team and have close connections to the White House and the Democratic Party.

The political arm of the Center for American Progress, the influential progressive think tank, is planning to cast the Republican investigations as “politically motivated revenge politics,” according to its chief executive, Patrick Gaspard, who served as White House political director under President Obama.

The rush by some of the left’s leading figures to organize swift responses to potential investigations highlights an old Washington dynamic: When there is divided government, lawmaking tends to grind to a halt and Congress is dominated by oversight fights.

That is likely to be particularly true when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next year with a majority that is slimmer than the party had hoped. In such an environment, it can be easier to win support for oversight investigations, which require less consensus than major legislative initiatives.

Republicans appear to be divided on just how far to push things. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican nominee to be speaker of the House, has downplayed an impeachment of Mr. Biden, even as some on the far right in his party have called for such an effort as payback for the two impeachments by Democrats of former President Donald J. Trump.

But Republican leadership has not ruled out impeaching cabinet members, including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who have both recently fortified their staffs to deal with the challenge.

Moreover, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Comer and Representative Jim Jordan, the incoming chairman of the House judiciary committee, have made it clear they intend to aggressively pursue investigations into Hunter Biden, the crisis at the border and the Justice Department, which Mr. Jordan accused of operating as a political arm of the White House.