Meet The Conservative Republican Bucking His Party On Impeachment
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) says Republicans don’t have evidence implicating Joe Biden.
Month: September 2023
Conservatives praise McCarthy for grilling reporter until she ‘admits’ GOP has evidence of Biden wrongdoing
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy set social media ablaze on Thursday after he pushed back against a reporter’s assertion that he launched an impeachment inquiry "without evidence."
"AP reported that McCarthy's impeachment inquiry was launched ‘without evidence,’" GOP operative Arthur Schwartz posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday. "Here’s McCarthy forcing an AP reporter to admit that there was lots of evidence to support an impeachment inquiry."
In the clip, AP reporter Farnoush Amiri asked McCarthy about fellow Republicans who have said that the investigation into President Biden has yet to show an impeachable offense at this point.
"Is that an assessment you share?" Amiri asked.
"You know, an impeachment inquiry is not an impeachment," McCarthy responded, "What an impeachment inquiry is to do is to get answers to questions. Are you concerned about all the stuff that was recently learned?"
McCarthy then went through a list of instances that many have characterized as possible evidence of wrongdoing from the president.
"Do you believe the president lied to the American public when he said he'd never talked to his son about his business dealings?" McCarthy asked "Yes or no?"
"I can't answer that," Amiri replied.
"Do you believe when they said the president went on conference calls? Do you believe that happened?" McCarthy asked.
"That's what the testimony says," Amiri answered.
"Do you believe the president went to Cafe Milano and had dinner with the clients of Hunter Biden, who believes he got those clients because he was selling the brand?"
"That's what the testimony said," Amiri answered.
"Do you believe Hunter Biden, when you saw the video of him driving the Porsche, that he got $143,000 to buy that Porsche the next day? Do you believe that $3 million from the Russian oligarch that was transferred to the shell companies that the Biden's controlled after the dinner from Cafe Milano took place?" McCarthy asked.
McCarthy then asked Amiri again if she believed the president lied, to which she responded, "But is lying an impeachable offense?"
"All I'm saying is I would like to know the answer to these questions," McCarthy said. "The American public would like to know."
The clip was immediately picked up by conservatives on social media who slammed the narrative from many on the left who have claimed there is no evidence of wrongdoing related to President Biden and his family.
"This is what happens when reporters follow the White House’s commands to engage as activists with the Republican inquiry instead of as journalists impartially seeking facts," GOP strategist Matt Whitlock responded on X.
"It's on days like today where we see what the left wing foundations that bankroll the Associated Press get for their money," former Ted Cruz spokesperson Steve Guest posted online.
"’Is lying an impeachable offense,’" The Spectator Editor Stephen L. Miller posted on X. "Oh you sweet summer child…"
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for The Associated Press said, "The Associated Press stands by reporter Farnoush Amiri, an established and respected journalist covering the U.S. Congress."
McCarthy officially gave the go ahead for an impeachment inquiry on Tuesday after saying that House Republicans have "uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct."
"Today, I am directing our House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe," McCarthy announced in a statement at the Capitol. "This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public."
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: ‘Hunter Biden’s Laptop’ and other tales to scare the children with
McKay Coppins/The Atlantic:
WHAT MITT ROMNEY SAW IN THE SENATE
In an exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming biography of the senator, Romney: A Reckoning, he reveals what drove him to retire.
It begins with a text message from Angus King, the junior senator from Maine: “Could you give me a call when you get a chance? Important.”
Romney calls, and King informs him of a conversation he’s just had with a high-ranking Pentagon official. Law enforcement has been tracking online chatter among right-wing extremists who appear to be planning something bad on the day of Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in Washington, D.C. The president has been telling them the election was stolen; now they’re coming to steal it back. There’s talk of gun smuggling, of bombs and arson, of targeting the traitors in Congress who are responsible for this travesty. Romney’s name has been popping up in some frightening corners of the internet, which is why King needed to talk to him. He isn’t sure Romney will be safe.
This excerpt and the bit that follows has been all over Washington. While much of it is known, Mitt told Mitch McConnell what King told Romney. And if Senators knew, what did the FBI and security forces know?
Whatever the answers, it’s a stark reminder of why Donald Trump was impeached a second time.
Charlie Sykes/The Bulwark:
Mitt Romney and the Verdict of History
Thoughts about Death and History and Fragility and Violence.
Mitt Romney will leave the Senate the same way he came in. One of the vanishingly rare statesmen left in politics, Romney tried to be the conscience of the party he once led. That made him a very lonely man.
As he told the Wapo’s Dan Balz yesterday: “It’s pretty clear that the party is inclined to a populist demagogue message.”
Now comes the verdict of history.
Yet in reality, McCarthy’s decision to pivot even harder to the right this week, acquiescing to demands that he open an impeachment inquiry, will have far-reaching implications for the House. It could undo months of effort the two men [Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries] have put into building a more congenial dynamic than the frosty relationship McCarthy had with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi was notoriously frigid toward McCarthy, even calling him “a moron” on camera last year. This bothered McCarthy so much that he sat down with Jeffries before the new Congress to set a new tone. No public name calling, they said. Both vowed to treat each other respectfully, even when they disagree, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting.
So far, they’ve stuck to that handshake deal. The two leaders have even worked closely together on some joint initiatives, including standing up the China select committee and pulling together a bipartisan artificial intelligence briefing. Jeffries’ allies see McCarthy as a speaker who would theoretically like to work with Democrats, but has no political space to do so.
Yet that bonhomie is in jeopardy as McCarthy continues to bend to his right flank.
Kevin McCarthy's profanity-laced tirade overshadowed the special GOP impeachment briefing.
“If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the f—ing motion,” the speaker said at the top of the meeting.
It's a sign of the broader frustration building among the majority of House Republicans, many of whom were receptive to McCarthy's blow up. Some have advocated for increased pressure on conservative members, who have shrugged at the idea of a shutdown and continued pushing spending priorities that would be rejected by the Democratic Senate and White House.
And McCarthy is dialing up the pressure, telling his members during the closed-door meeting that once they return to Washington next week they won’t leave until they’ve funded the government.
“We’re going to come back in next week and we’re not going to leave until we get the job done,” he told reporters after the meeting.
And who believes McCarthy will stand up to pressure from his right flank?
Cliff Schecter on Tim Scott:
Dan Pfeiffer/”The Message Box” on Substack:
Impeachment Scam: What You Need to Know
The GOP is hoping to use impeachment and a broken info environment to damage Biden
This week, the Republicans in the House made the unprecedented and constitutionally dubious decision to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Biden without a single shred of evidence. While the politics of impeachment are likely to blow up in the Republicans’ faces, this unpredictable situation is not without pitfalls for Biden and the Democrats. One of those pitfalls involves the horse-race obsessed political media and dystopic information environment flooded with disinformation and clickbait. The White House is so concerned about how news of the impeachment inquiry will reach the public that on Tuesday they sent a letter to news organizations urging them to not to treat this inquiry as normal. As Ian Sams, Special Assistant the Spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office wrote:
Reporting that solely focuses on process rather than substance is woefully inadequate when it comes to something as historically grave as impeachment.
It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies. When even House Republican members are admitting that there is simply no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong, much less impeachable, that should set off alarm bells for news organizations.
The White House’s concerns are warranted. Less than 24 hours after McCarthy’s announcement, social media is being flooded with enough disinformation and overly credulous reporting to make people who haven’t been following the story think that Biden is somehow guilty of something. I wanted to provide some information and context to help Message Box readers understand this madness and talk to your friends and family who may encounter the bad info floating out there.
Mark Meadows had two items in federal court pending in the GA case. One was to stay a result that hadn’t happened (as seen here, withdrawn). That would have failed, since GA law allows a trial but would have withheld a verdict pending appeal.
The other item is an appeal to remove his case to federal jurisdiction, already denied by Steve Jones and now on expedited appeal to the 11th Circuit. Meadows’s initial brief for the appeal is due Monday. and the state of GA response a week later.
Emily Bazelon/New York Times:
The Surprising Places Where Abortion Rights Are on the Ballot, and Winning
But something else also happened. In his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito invited Americans to decide directly how much abortion access to allow. “In some states, voters may believe that the abortion right should be even more extensive,” Alito wrote. “Voters in other states may wish to impose tight restrictions.” Unexpectedly, in red and purple states that have put the question directly to the public — asking people to reject or support abortion rights in a ballot measure — they have voted against new restrictions or in favor of more access every time.
Greg Sargent/Washington Post:
How the ‘MAGA doom loop’ is already threatening Trump’s 2024 chances
The pattern is becoming clear: Even as voters are mobilizing to protect democracy at the ballot box, Republicans are redoubling their commitment to the former president’s anti-majoritarian mode of politics. And this, in turn, is motivating voters even more.
Call it the “MAGA doom loop.” It’s playing out in state after state.
Rep. Adam Smith says GOP-led Biden impeachment inquiry is “ridiculous step”
On "The Takeout" podcast this week, Rep. Adam Smith discusses the impeachment inquiry into President Biden, and the prospect of a partial government shutdown.
Rep. Adam Smith calls GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry a “ridiculous step”
On "The Takeout" podcast this week, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith discusses the House GOP impeachment inquiry against President Biden and the prospect of a partial government shutdown.
Texas AG Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial is almost over. This is what happened and what’s next
Closing arguments were set to begin Friday in the historic impeachment trial that could remove Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from office over corruption allegations. It will soon go the jury of 30 senators, most of them Republicans like him.
The Republicans most at risk in next year’s election are falling in line behind impeachment inquiry
The Republicans whose elections in swing districts next year will determine which party gains control of the House are overwhelmingly voicing their support for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. It's a stance, Democrats say, that could come back to haunt them.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer accuses House Republicans of ‘congressional manipulation’
Hunter Biden’s lawyer said Thursday that prosecutors caved to House Republicans’ political pressure when they secured an indictment of the first son.
Just hours after a grand jury indicted Hunter Biden on charges related to gun possession, his top defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, sent a tranche of documents to three congressional committees.
The materials were accompanied by a cover letter lambasting the three Republican committee chairs investigating the Biden family. POLITICO obtained the letter and is publishing it here, along with some of the materials.
Those materials include a lengthy letter Lowell sent to the Justice Department accusing whistleblowers of committing crimes by revealing protected information about the president’s son. Lawyers for those whistleblowers have long held that they scrupulously followed the law in making disclosures to Congress.
Lowell opened the letter by saying lawmakers were focused solely on trying “to move the needle of political support for the 2024 election” rather than conducting legitimate oversight. And he indicated he believes Hunter Biden’s indictment was the result of their pressure.
“Your blatant efforts achieved your goal as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware today filed gun charges against our client –– charges that are unprecedented when not part of some other criminal conduct and have been found unconstitutional by a federal court of appeals –– and who reversed his earlier decision that such charges were not warranted,” Lowell wrote. “Your improper interference now affecting a federal prosecutor is a much greater threat to society than the 11 days that Mr. Biden possessed an unloaded gun.”
The letter marks a major escalation in the fight between the president’s son and the Hill Republicans who have made him a focus of their recently-announced impeachment inquiry targeting the president.
The letter also accuses the committee’s witnesses of violating “federal laws protecting grand jury and tax information,” and accuses Republicans of misusing their investigation “to dump wholesale protected tax information about Mr. Biden” into public view.
Tristan Leavitt, an attorney with the nonprofit group Empower Oversight, who represents one of the IRS whistleblowers, defended his client in a statement to POLITICO and said the materials contained troubling revelations about the lawyers representing the first son.
“These materials show attorneys for the President’s son repeatedly lobbied the Biden Justice Department to initiate retaliatory prosecutions of our client for lawfully making protected whistleblower disclosures,” he said.
“Here we go again,” the statement continued. “Hunter Biden’s attorneys have already made this argument to Judge Maryellen Noreika, who reviewed the whistleblower materials and rejected defense counsel’s baseless allegations, including their claims about grand jury secrecy violations. Taxpayer privacy laws are written by Congress, and it gave itself authority in those laws to hear disclosures about taxpayer information. Whether Congress decides to make that information public pursuant to its statutory process is up to them."
A spokesperson for Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did a spokesperson for Hunter Biden’s legal team.
A spokesperson for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, declined to comment.
Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chair of the House oversight committee, said in a statement that his investigation “shamed” the Justice Department into charging the first son.
“Hunter Biden’s legal team agrees that the Justice Department makes decisions based on politics like we’ve said all along, but they’ve got it backwards,” he said. “Congress putting a spotlight on the Justice Department’s sweetheart plea deal shamed the Justice Department into doing what’s right on one thing after they got caught. The Justice Department must administer the law fairly and equally. That’s what Americans demand and deserve.”
The tranche of material sent to the three committee chairs included a letter that Lowell sent on Aug. 14 of this year to prosecutors working on the Hunter Biden investigation, including the U.S. Attorney supervising the probe. That letter accused two IRS whistleblowers who worked on the investigation of illegally sharing information about the probe with Congress and the public, including in media interviews. That letter included exhibits containing multiple other communications that Hunter Biden’s legal team sent to Justice Department officials over the course of the last year.
Lowell also said that the actions of the two IRS agents pressured the Justice Department to change its position in plea deal negotiations. Before one of the whistleblowers discussed the case on a national TV interview, the Justice Department was weighing “a consensual non-prosecution resolution to all conduct under investigation, where the resolution proposed by both sides did not include any guilty plea,” Lowell wrote. But one day after the interview aired, he added, prosecutors said they would require Biden to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges.
Biden Says Republicans Want to Impeach Him to ‘Shut Down the Government’
‘Everybody always asks about impeachment. I get up every day — not a joke — not focused on impeachment. I’ve got a job to do,’ the president said.
Republicans use long-debunked scam to fuel impeachment inquiry
On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared that he was turning three Republican investigations that have already been running since January into “impeachment inquiries” on the basis of … of … well, on the basis of how McCarthy is scared sh--less that the members of his own party might come to collect on all the promises he made to get his big office.
The public could—and has—cheerfully ignored the performance art that three Republican-run committees have been executing with no obvious goal other than to allow them to send out daily fundraising requests that include the phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop.” People expect Republicans to run pointless inquiries into the same thing over and over again. (See: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, or the other five investigations into Benghazi.) But an impeachment inquiry seems like it should have at least some tiny scrap of evidence to justify its existence.
It has apparently fallen to Rep. Jim Jordan to provide that scrap. Only what he’s trotting out for the Fox & Friends crowd has a slight problem: It’s all just a scam that blew up on Republicans four years ago.
Here’s what Jordan tried to sell on Fox & Friends as justification for an impeachment inquiry.
”[President Joe Biden] told Ukraine, ‘If you don’t fire the prosecutor, you’re not getting the money.’ That’s exactly what they accused President Trump of doing, which he didn’t do and they impeached him over that. He did it. And he did it — remember, Dec. 4, 2015, Devon Archer and Hunter Biden are meeting with the head of Burisma, Mr. Zlochevsky, and they called D.C. Now, Devon Archer says, ‘I stepped away. I don’t know who they talked to in D.C.’ Now, come on. They called D.C. And then five days later, the vice president of the United States, the current president of the United States, goes to Ukraine and starts the process into getting the prosecutor fired.”
It’s not really possible to feel sorry for Jordan, but it is possible to feel a level of astonishment over just what level of pathetic—patheticness? pathegnosity?—he is willing to reach in order to justify his actions.
To steal the opening from the last two “Spider Man” animated features: Let’s do this one more time.
All of this business about Joe Biden and Burisma goes back to May 2019 and an article that appeared in The New York Times that gave Rudy Giuliani an open mic to make a set of unchallenged claims. Trump immediately picked up those claims and leveled them at then-undeclared candidate Joe Biden. To see just how close they are to what Jordan is saying now, let’s look at what Daily Kos wrote then:
At the heart of the charge Trump is making against Biden is this: Biden’s son Hunter was on the board of an energy company called Burisma Holdings that was targeted by a Ukrainian prosecutor. This prosecutor was one of several figures whom Joe Biden railed against on a trip to Ukraine in which he complained about corruption in the country’s government, including a threat to withhold U.S. funds if Ukraine didn’t clean up its act. In the next election, the prosecutor was voted out, and Ukraine got its funds.
When that was written, on May 2, 2019, there was still some belief that Burisma might have actually benefited from the removal of that prosecutor, whose name was Viktor Shokin. However, just two weeks later, Bloomberg did something that The New York Times apparently never considered: They sent a reporter to Ukraine and checked up on Giuliani’s claims. What they discovered was that not one word held up to the slightest scrutiny.
It turns out that the problem with Shokin was that he wasn’t investigating Burisma, or much of anything else. In fact, as early as 2015, prosecutors in the U.K., who actually were trying to go after both Burisma and Zlochevsky, became convinced that Shokin was actively interfering with that investigation to protect Burisma. British officials didn’t just take their displeasure to the Ukrainian government, they also complained to the U.S.
It was those complaints that caused Joe Biden to include Shokin in a group of officials that the U.S. wanted removed due to suspected corruption, because eliminating corruption in the Ukrainian government was something both the U.K. and the U.S. were actively championing. In getting rid of Shokin, Biden was encouraging investigation of Burisma, but stopping it.
All of this was dutifully walked through during Trump’s first impeachment—an impeachment that happened because Trump tried to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into backing up Giuliani’s false claims.
Where did Giuliani’s faux scandal originate? Simple. Donald Trump sent him. It took until February 2020 for Trump to confess this openly, but he admitted sending Giuliani to Ukraine on a Geraldo Rivera podcast. Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine, not for any purpose to benefit the United States, but explicitly to talk to people who had run out of the government for being too corrupt to cook up something that could be used against Biden, who Trump saw as his biggest electoral threat.
Of course, those corrupt former officials and members of a pro-Russian faction within Ukraine had a price for giving Giuliani the story they wanted: the ouster of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. They wanted Yovanovitch out because she was regarded as both an effective advocate for the U.S. and a tireless fighter against corruption. Giuliani snapped up that deal. He sold Trump on the idea that Yovanovitch had said bad things about him—and that she was standing in the way of creating the narrative Giuliani was trying to create in Ukraine. Just like that, Yovanovitch was gone.
None of this is new. In fact, it’s not just four years old, but every aspect of the story has been covered again, and again, and again. Shokin’s deputy has even admitted that the prosecutor was not investigating Burisma.
Everything that Jordan was babbling about on Fox was sad, false, and ridiculous. Deplorable seems like the right word. But hey, he does seem to have convinced one person.
What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.