Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced on Tuesday that congressional Republicans will launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his connections to his family members' businesses.

“Today I am directing our house committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” McCarthy said at a brief press conference at the Capitol building. “The American people deserve to know that the public offices are not for sale and that the federal government is not being used to cover up the actions of a politically-associated family.”

It's the first step of a process that could result in articles of impeachment and eventually a trial in the Senate.

The White House called the announcement "extreme politics at its worst." Biden's 2024 presidential campaign decried it as McCarthy doing the bidding of former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner for the nomination.

“As Donald Trump ramped up his demands for a baseless impeachment inquiry, Kevin McCarthy cemented his role as the Trump campaign’s super-surrogate by turning the House of Representatives into an arm of his presidential campaign," campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement, noting that 11 days ago McCarthy said he would only move forward with an inquiry if it was approved by the entire House. On Tuesday, McCarthy said the inquiry would be launched by House committees without a vote.

"What has changed since then?" Moussa continued. "Several members of the Speaker’s own conference have come out and publicly panned impeachment as a political stunt, pointing out there is no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden as Republicans litigate the same debunked conspiracy theories they’ve investigated for over four years.” 

McCarthy's announcement came as Congress returned to work in Washington this week after spending a monthslong summer break in their districts. 

“In the months that we were gone ... House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct,” McCarthy said. “Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

At question are Biden’s connections to the overseas business dealings of his son Hunter and brother Jim as vice president during the Obama administration.

McCarthy said that the House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, along with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith of Missouri, will take point on the impeachment inquiry.

"This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public, the California Republican said. "That's exactly what we want to know: the answers."

After McCarthy announced the probe, the three committee chairs issued a joint statement saying that the House GOP has uncovered “an overwhelming amount of evidence showing President Joe Biden lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family's influence peddling schemes."

The committees "will continue to work to follow the facts to ensure President Biden is held accountable for abusing public office for his family's financial gain," the chairmen wrote. "The American people demand and deserve answers, transparency, and accountability for this blatant abuse of public office."

A top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee pushed back on Republican claims in a brief interview with Spectrum News on Tuesday.

"I participated in those hearings and questioned the witnesses and spoke, I felt that it was mostly smoke and not much fire," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat. "The investigator, the now independent counsel, who is investigating Hunter Biden has yet to find a single thing connecting that to the President of the United States."

"This is really something that's that's troubling to see the president have a son engaged in the kind of misconduct that Hunter Biden did, but it does not reflect on the president or provide the slightest grounds for impeachment," Doggett added.

The Speaker encouraged Biden and his team "to fully cooperate," saying: "I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well."

Hunter Biden is under federal investigation by a Delaware prosecutor appointed by Trump and elevated to special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland. While other charges are expected to be brought this month, no charges or allegations of wrongdoing have been made by federal investigators about his business dealings in Ukraine, where he served on the board of an energy company.

“My son has done nothing wrong. I trust him, I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him,” the elder Biden said on MSNBC in May. The president did not make any public appearances on Tuesday.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has warned House Republicans off the effort, but said Tuesday: "I don’t think Speaker McCarthy needs advice from the Senate.”

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the impeachment inquiry “absurd.”

At a press conference on Tuesday evening held by House Democratic leadership, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the inquiry "a kangaroo court, fishing expedition and conspiracy theater rolled into one" and accused House GOP of doing Trump's bidding.

"There are no moderates left in the House Republican conference. They talk a good game, but at the end of the day, they all do the same exact thing: bend the knee to Donald Trump," Jeffries said.

Comer is digging deeper into the Biden family finances and is expected to seek banking records for Hunter Biden as the panel tries to follow the flow of money.

On Tuesday, Comer demanded the State Department produce documents about the work Biden did as vice president during the Obama administration to clean up corruption in Ukraine. Comer wants to understand the State Department's views of former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, whom Biden and many Western allies wanted removed from office because of allegations of corruption.

The White House has dismissed the allegations against Biden as politically motivated, denied the president was involved in his son's business dealings and continued to do so on Tuesday.

"House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they've turned up no evidence of wrongdoing," White House spokesperson Ian Sams wrote on social media shortly after McCarthy's announcement. "His own GOP members have said so. He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn't have support. Extreme politics at its worst."

Biden officials also dismissed the lack of evidence that Republicans have shown in their probes of the president and his family.

"That's some really critical context to lead with when covering this historic debasement of a chamber of Congress," White House Regional Communications Director Harris Talwar wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. "Americans deserve an honest accounting of the facts."

Despite the lack of criminal prosecution, Republicans have zeroed in on the president’s son since the 2020 election, which have grown to a fever pitch in recent months with congressional hearings that have involved whistleblower testimony and explicit photos of Hunter Biden plastered on poster board. 

"What impeachment inquiry allows people to do, it just makes Congress at the apex of strength for any subpoenas. And I think the American public needs to be able to get the answers to these questions," McCarthy told Spectrum News earlier on Tuesday.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., took credit for McCarthy's newfound urgency after pushing for the launch of the impeachment process over the weekend and threatening to work to oust the speaker if he did not move ahead. On X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the far-right Republican wrote "remember that as I pushed him for weeks," Fox News host Brian Kilmeade had said last week that Gaetz was "speaking into the wind."

"Turns out, the wind may be listening," Gaetz wrote.

Under the House rules, McCarthy's opponents are able to call a vote at any time to try to oust the speaker from office.

On Tuesday, minutes after McCarthy's announcement, Gaetz said on the House floor that if the speaker did not give into his demands across a wide range of issues, he would initiate a vote to end his tenure atop Congress.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican closely aligned with McCarthy, disputed Gaetz’s boast and insisted she got the ball rolling by introducing articles of impeachment as far back as the day Biden took office.

But not every Republican was thrilled by the impeachment news. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” ahead of McCarthy's announcement Tuesday that “I don't see evidence yet that would support impeaching Joe Biden, and I think we're cheapening impeachment by doing that kind of thing.” He argued congressional Republicans’s investigations through typical oversight authorities and the special counsel’s probe were sufficient enough for now.

The announcement comes as federal government funding is set to run out on Sept. 30, which is the end of the federal fiscal year, and Congress must pass new funding bills or risk a shutdown and the interruption of government services. It’s a familiar political bind for the California congressman, who's juggling the impeachment inquiry and the government shutdown threat with no clear end game.

Conservatives who power McCarty's majority want to slash spending, and the hard right is unwilling to approve spending levels the speaker negotiated with Biden earlier this year.

McCarthy is trying to float a 30-day stopgap measure to keep government running to Nov. 1, but conservatives are balking at what's called a continuing resolution, or CR, as they pursue cuts.

Any charges would need to be approved by a simple majority in the House, and some Republicans have already indicated they haven't seen enough evidence to reach their threshold of voting for articles of impeachment. McCarthy's action on Tuesday may have spared some vulnerable Republicans in his conference a tough vote.

If the vote is successful, the charges would then be sent to the Senate where the president would face a trial with a two-thirds majority threshold to convict.

Currently, Democrats hold a one-seat majority in the Senate. Senators of a president’s own party have only voted to convict twice: both times Trump was impeached. In 2019, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney voted to convict Trump on one of two charges connected to his alleged efforts to get dirt from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Biden.

And in 2021, seven Republicans voted against the then-president, but the effort fell short of the 67 votes needed to convict and bar Trump from federal office for the charge of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Only three presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Trump in 2019 and 2021. All were acquitted in trial. Richard Nixon resigned after Congress began the impeachment process against him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.