With just days to go before Congress reconvenes following summer recess, Republicans appear close to launching an official impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which could include investigating his family. The investigations into Hunter Biden, a new interview from a deposed Ukrainian prosecutor, and pressure from the right flank of the House Republican Conference could push Speaker McCarthy to open the probe sooner rather than later. 

During a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Mr. McCarthy said that the impeachment of Mr. Biden is the “natural step forward” to further his party’s investigations of the Biden family, probes that began shortly after Republicans took the House majority in January. The opening of an impeachment inquiry would allow Mr. McCarthy to deputize one or more committees to run the investigation, which would likely be led by the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees — all of which have played leading roles in exposing the younger Mr. Biden’s financial dealings. 

While there may not yet be 218 Republican votes to impeach the president, there is no legal requirement that the House vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry, which can take several months or longer. The impeachment inquiries into Presidents Andrew Johnson and Clinton were officially instigated by House votes, as was the first impeachment inquiry into President Trump. However, there was no second impeachment inquiry in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack, and the House proceeded with a stand-alone impeachment resolution. 

The accelerating path to impeachment is a quick turnaround for the speaker, who last year said that he would prefer to not seek an impeachment of the president. Such a move is “not good for the country,” he said in October.

That, however, was before more evidence emerged that the Department of Justice may have been slow-walking or even obstructing a United States attorney, David Weiss, in his probe of the younger Mr. Biden. It was also before a cascade of new, troubling allegations about the president’s son emerged. 

One of the younger Mr. Biden’s former friends and business associates, Devon Archer, said in an interview with the Oversight Committee that Mr. Biden was selling the “illusion of access” to his father and often dialed his father into business meetings with foreign clients. 

The committee has also documented what it says is more than $20 million in payments from foreign entities in Ukraine, Communist China, and other countries sent to the first son during his father’s time as vice president — funds that, according to the Oversight Committee, were later dispersed to members of the first family, including to the first son’s former girlfriend, Hallie Biden, who is also the widow of his brother, Beau. Furthermore, GOP lawmakers have publicized a partially redacted FD-1023 form in which an anonymous “confidential human source” alleges to the FBI that the president and his son both received $5 million bribes from business interests in Ukraine.

This weekend, a new voice emerged, also accusing the two Bidens of taking bribes. The former top prosecutor in the county, Viktor Shokin, told Fox News on Saturday that he was fired by Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, for investigating the energy company Burisma, which was paying the first son more than $80,000 a month to sit on its board of directors. 

“I have said repeatedly in my previous interviews that Poroshenko fired me at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma,” Mr. Shokin told Brian Kilmeade. “There were no complaints whatsoever and no problems with how I was performing at my job. But because pressure was repeatedly put on Poroshenko, that is what ended up in him firing me.”

Mr. Shokin told Mr. Kilmeade that both Bidens were taking bribes in the Burisma affair. His allegations could corroborate the information from the FBI’s “confidential human source.”

Regarding impeachment, the first challenge for Mr. McCarthy is to keep the government open in order to advance such an inquiry. Indeed, the prospect of a vigorous impeachment inquiry could be an inducement to conservative GOP lawmakers to support passing a short-term spending bill rather than shutting down the government during a dispute over budget cuts.

“If we shut down, all of government shuts down — investigations and everything else,” Mr. McCarthy told Fox News.