House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Monday that allegations stemming from Republican investigations into the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s relatives are «rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.»

The allegations include that members of the Biden family received payments from foreign companies and that the Justice Department, according to IRS whistleblowers, has treated the Biden family «differently» in an investigation into Hunter Biden, McCarthy said in a statement. interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night.

“When Biden ran for office, he told the public that he had never talked about business. He said that his family never received a dollar from China, which we now prove to be untrue,” McCarthy alleged.

«If you’re sitting in our position today, we wouldn’t know about this if the Republicans hadn’t won a majority,» he continued. “We just follow where the information has led us. But this is getting to the level of an impeachment inquiry, which gives Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the necessary knowledge and information.»

The White House and Democrats were quick to criticize McCarthy’s comments. Spokesman ian sams he tweeted that the GOP’s «longing to persecute» Biden «regardless of the truth is seemingly bottomless.»

“Instead of focusing on the real issues Americans want us to address, like continuing to lower inflation or create jobs, this is what @HouseGOP wants to prioritize,” Sams tweeted.

Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, in a statement Tuesday dismissed McCarthy’s comments as a «political stunt intended to help» former President Donald Trump.

“It is clear that Donald Trump is the true Speaker of the House,” Harrison said. “He has ensured that the House majority is little more than an arm of his 2024 campaign, and Kevin McCarthy is happy to do as he asks, vowing to eliminate Trump’s own bipartisan impeachments and now threatening President Biden with baseless impeachment to distract from his lack of a meaningful agenda and Trump’s significant challenges.”

“This is another political stunt meant to help Trump, which House Republicans have already admitted to,” he added.

McCarthy’s comments are the strongest he has made yet about a potential impeachment inquiry.

His comments come after Republicans decided last month to forgo an immediate vote on a Biden impeachment resolution led by Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, sending it to the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees amid escalating internal GOP tensions.

The move came after McCarthy urged rank-and-file Republicans in a closed-door meeting to oppose Boebert’s resolution, arguing that such an important issue should go through the committee process, three Republican sources who heard the comments confirmed.

In early May, Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said they had been informed by a whistleblower that the FBI had a document known as FD-1023 that included an unverified allegation from a human source that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, was involved in a bribery scheme involving a foreign government. Grassley released a redacted version of the FBI informant’s document last week.

Kelly O’Donnell and mike memoli contributed.