The US House of Representatives has voted to formalise its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Lawmakers voted along party lines to back a resolution that Republicans say will give them more power to gather evidence and enforce legal demands.
Three Republican-led House committees allege bribery and corruption during Mr Biden’s tenure as vice-president.
But they have yet to present evidence of wrongdoing, and Mr Biden says his opponents are “attacking him with lies”.
The lower chamber of Congress, which Republicans control by a slim eight-seat margin, approved the inquiry on Wednesday afternoon by a vote of 221 to 212.
Voting to authorise an inquiry is not the same as voting for impeachment, but it advances the likelihood that the House will eventually seek to impeach Joe Biden.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the chamber “will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome” but “the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore”.
Republicans on the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees have been trying to show for months that Mr. Biden was enriched by his family’s foreign business dealings and accepted bribes.
But the full House never voted to open an impeachment probe, leading many Democrats to question its legal authority.
The oversight committee claims the Biden family and its business associates received more than $24m (£19m) from foreign sources in China, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia and Ukraine between 2014 and 2019.
Chairman of the house Committee James Comer alleges that Mr Biden’s relatives – in particular his son, Hunter – sold access to the then-vice-president and influence-peddled off “the Biden brand”. He has further alleged that the president “spoke, dined, and developed relationships with” his son’s business partners.
A formal impeachment investigation, that leads to a House vote and a Senate trial, could represent a major headache for the president in the midst of an election year. As Mr Biden, 81, gears up for re-election, he is likely to face off against Donald Trump, 77, a twice-impeached former president and the current Republican frontrunner, in the November 2024 general election.
Mr Trump, who has vowed retribution against his political opponents, has urged his Capitol Hill allies to move quickly to impeach his successor.
