Senate Republicans are pouring cold water on the idea that President Biden’s classified documents controversy rises to the level of an impeachable offense, heading off House conservatives looking for revenge after former President Trump’s two trials.
Even before Tuesday’s revelation that about a dozen classified documents had been found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, GOP senators were cool to the idea of impeachment.
“I don’t think you want to get into where it’s a tit for tat, every two years or four years you’re dealing with impeachment proceedings in the House and Senate,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) told The Hill. “There has to be a really good reason, obviously, the constitutional reasons and grounds for that. So we’ll see where it goes.”
Asked whether Biden’s possession of classified documents has the potential to rise to the level of an impeachable offense, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate GOP leadership team, gave a simple answer: “No.”
Many Republicans thought the Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump over delaying military aide to Ukraine was a partisan overreach. But that means they are also wary of doing the same thing now that their party has the House majority.
It’s just one of several tension points emerging between Republicans in the two chambers.
Senate Republicans have mostly ignored chatter in the House about impeaching Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or wiping out the tax code and replacing it with a 23 percent to 30 percent national sales tax.
Some Republicans think talk of impeaching Biden will grow in the House, even though GOP senators warn that it’s a bad idea.
House Republicans introduced more than a dozen impeachment resolutions against Biden in the last Congress, and the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee has already initiated an investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents, which could lay the ground for future impeachment proceedings.
Trump has also come under criticism for a separate classified documents controversy, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in an interview with Fox Business argued that Biden’s handling of classified documents was more egregious because the former Republican president at least secured the classified information he held with padlocks.
“That’s much different than what we’re finding now with President Biden, and I think it is severely going to cause him a great deal of trouble in the future as we get more of the truth,” McCarthy told Fox host Larry Kudlow.
A few Senate Republicans entertain the idea that the classified documents found at Biden’s Delaware home and former Washington, D.C., office would lead to a Senate impeachment trial.
“This actually might be an impeachable offense. If there’s a high crime and misdemeanor standard, which there is, this is the closest thing to one in recent years,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “If the special counsel comes up with anything, realizing [Biden’s] a sitting president, I suppose they could draft up what would become articles of impeachment, depending on what they find.”
Cramer said “I personally hate impeachments” but thinks the standard has changed since House Democrats impeached Trump in 2019 after he held up aid to Ukraine to use as leverage to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden’s family’s business dealings in the country.
Only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney (Utah), voted to convict on an article of impeachment during Trump’s 2020 Senate trial.
Cramer said “Democrats created an impeachment cycle and we may be in that cycle,” calling Trump’s first impeachment “far-fetched and silly.”
He said House Republicans now need to decide whether they want to keep the impeachment bar as low as they believe Democrats set it in 2019 or whether to elevate it to cover only the most serious crimes.
The documents found at Pence’s home would further muddy any attempt to argue that Biden’s possession of classified documents meets the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Romney on Tuesday said it will be hard for House Republicans to credibly push an article of impeachment against Biden for keeping classified documents at his Delaware home after Pence admitted the same transgression.
“I can’t imagine that’s where it’s going to head with so many people in the same arena,” he said.
Some key Senate Republicans, such as Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (Fla.), are already on record downplaying Trump’s possession of classified documents at his Florida home as a “storage” issue.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday dismissed a question about whether Biden’s possession of classified documents could rise to the level of an impeachable offense.
“I don’t have an answer to that hypothetical. I do think that the Justice Department seems to be willing to treat everybody the same and to try to retrieve the documents, and obviously it’s not a great idea to take classified documents away from the archives. We’ll see how they continue to handle it,” he said.
Republican senators say it should be up to Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, to decide whether Biden should be charged with a crime, not House Republicans, who filed more than a dozen articles of impeachment against Biden in the last Congress.
“It could be a criminal offense,” Cornyn said. “That’s what the special counsel is for. Mishandling classified materials is very serious.”
Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith in November to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents and whether he unlawfully interfered with the 2021 transfer of presidential power.
Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted some Democrats for “hypocrisy” by trying to minimize Biden’s culpability after hammering Trump for months after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August to retrieve classified documents.
“The thing that’s made this such a story is the hypocrisy, [Democrats] attacking Trump,” he said. “Nobody should take classified materials outside of a secure facility, period.”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said fellow Republicans should “be careful” about “knee-jerking to impeachment.”
“I think the country will fatigue of that,” he said, pointing out that recent impeachment proceedings against former Presidents Clinton and Trump “have not ended up with any real result.”
“If you start doing it on everything, I think it would be bad politically and for the mechanics of government working,” he said.
Democrats picked up five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections as the Republican majority was in the midst of gearing up to impeach Clinton, marking a rare instance when the president’s party picked up House seats in the middle of a second term.
Republicans picked up 14 House seats in the 2020 election after Democrats impeached Trump at the end of 2019.
Democrats are expressing alarm over President Biden’s classified documents controversy, with some criticizing the president as diminished in stature and his staff as irresponsible.
“I’m very concerned,” said Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), one of several incumbent Democrats who face potentially difficult reelection races next year in reliably GOP states in presidential elections.
“We have to get to the bottom of it to find out what the hell happened, why it happened,” he said.
“This is about national security,” Tester added, saying investigators need to find out if “it put our national security at risk.”
Biden’s January has been submerged in revelation after revelation of classified documents found at his former office and home. Most recently, 11 more documents were found during a search at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home on Friday.
The drip-drip-drip nature of the findings has left Democrats and Republicans alike wondering whether there will be more documents found and has left the White House looking off-balance at times.
Biden emerged from the 2022 midterms in a stronger position after Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and held down their losses in the House. Democrats still see Biden as their most likely standard-bearer, and lawmakers in his party have been quick to contrast his handling of classified documents with former President Trump — who is dealing with his own controversy.
At the same time, there’s little doubt the issue has raised some questions for Biden and the White House just as his team prepared to move forward with an expected presidential announcement later this year.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who like Tester is up for reelection next year in a state that Trump won easily in 2020, blasted the lax handling of secret information as “unbelievable” and “totally irresponsible.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Biden’s attempt to dismiss the building scandal last week by asserting “there’s no there there” also drew a barb from Manchin.
He told CNN on Monday “that’s just not a good statement,” adding “we just don’t know” what secrets may have been compromised.
Criticism from Manchin is hardly unheard of, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who represents a safer state for Democrats, was also somewhat critical on Sunday. He said the controversy “diminishes” Biden and noted the president rightly felt “embarrassed by the situation.”
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on November 15, 2022. (Greg Nash)
Durbin on Monday said of the White House: “They were not careful in handling classified documents.”
“When I think of how we deal with them in the Capitol in comparison, whoever was responsible for it didn’t follow the basic rules,” Durbin said of the handling of classified documents.
Durbin said he never took a classified document out of his office, “let alone out of the building.”
Yet Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stopped short of speculating whether Biden committed a potential crime, telling reporters: “I wouldn’t go that far.”
House Republicans are saber-rattling over the issue, signaling they intend to use their newly won oversight powers to look into the Biden documents story in a more aggressive way than they looked into Trump’s controversy.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the new chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has requested that the Secret Service hand over all the information it has on visitors to Biden’s Delaware home in the time since he served as vice president.
The request — made to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday — came after Comer demanded that visitor logs for the residence be turned over. The White House said last week that such records do not exist.
Later on Monday, White House counsel Stuart Delery wrote to Comer that the administration does not have possession of the documents the National Archives and Department of Justice have taken as part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.
Delery pledged to “accommodate legitimate oversight interests” in response to Comer’s request.
One GOP strategist said Republicans will go after Biden aggressively given the Trump controversy.
“The House is going to have a field day with investigations because of the fact that the Biden administration has been so outspoken criticizing Trump for the exact thing,” said Brian Darling, a former Senate aide.
Darling said the House could vote on articles of impeachment if the special prosecutor or House investigators find Biden broken the law or jeopardized national security.
“It’s possible. It depends on how the hearings go in the House. I think it’s quite possible that there will be discussion about impeachment because Democrats seemed so open to the idea of impeachment against President Trump and we’ve seen a lot of the payback from many of the things that happened when Democrats controlled the House, like kicking members off committees,” he said.
Durbin told reporters he expects House Republicans to go overboard in trying to tear down Biden, just as they did when they tried to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Biden’s possession of classified documents now effectively “completely neutralizes” Democratic attacks against Trump for holding sensitive material in Florida.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday, November 29, 2022. (Greg Nash)
“I’m not sure I understand all the laws that pertain to classified documents. I know the procedures that apply, but it seems to me the Justice Department is going to have to sort all that out and I think right now it’s still an evolving situation,” he said.
Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the careful handling of classified documents should always be a top priority and declared: “All of the circumstances are going to be examined …. So there’s a message that nobody is above the law.”
“The rule that I follow scrupulously is you don’t take documents out of the room,” he said. “Obviously there’s a lot of information coming out and I want to wait and see what the facts are.
But Wyden also gave Biden some political cover by drawing a distinction with Trump.
“One point that I don’t believe is in contention is President Biden has voluntarily cooperated and the former president did not,” he said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who faces a competitive re-election in a Republican-leaning state, urged the administration to be as transparent as possible.
“There’s nothing that’s betrayal of national interest, there’s nothing he’s trying to hide but they need to come out with all of it,” he said. “He’s got to deal with it and get it over with.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) expressed frustration that the media attention surrounding the classified documents scandal threatens to eclipse the congressional agenda.
“It’s being looked at to the nth degree,” he said. “I’m concerned that I think we’re wasting an awful lot of effort on something that has a special prosecutor look[ing] into it and at the end of the day it looks like all you’re going to find is some sloppiness. We have real problems to work on,” he said.
The White House blasted Republicans on Tuesday, accusing them of hypocrisy with how they’ve handled the separate controversies surrounding classified documents found at President Biden’s garage and office and former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
In a call with reporters, White House aides accused the GOP of engaging in “political theater” by attacking Biden while giving a free pass to Trump.
“The president and his team have been fully cooperating, acting responsibly and ensuring that this is handled properly,” said Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office. “You’ve seen something far different emerging among elected Republicans. What are they doing? They’ve decided that it’s time for more political stunts and theater.“
The call was set up after a difficult week for the White House that found Democrats struggling at times to explain why documents had been taken to Biden’s garage and office, and why the public hadn’t been told about them until Jan. 10 — when the news first broke about the discovery.
The White House first discovered that classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president had been taken to the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 2 — before the midterm elections and after Biden and other Democrats had blasted Trump over classified documents at Mar-a-Lago found earlier in the year.
The White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives of the discovery days later and the Archives then notified the Department of Justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed a special counsel to look into the issue after Garland had previously appointed a special counsel to look into the Trump classified documents matter.
On Tuesday, days after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) asked if the White House had a visitor log for Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence, Biden’s team sought to go on offense by accusing the GOP overreaching on the issue.
Comer, in an interview with CNN, also called Biden’s residence a “crime scene” after the classified documents were discovered at Biden’s home.
Sams and others say the GOP fury over the found Biden documents stands in sharp contrast to the more blasé reaction many Republicans had to the discovery of classified documents at Trump’s home.
Democrats also have argued the two situations are very different because of the level of cooperation Biden has sought to maintain in alerting the Archives to the discovery. Trump, in contrast, largely stiff-armed the Archives, they say.
In addition, the documents at Mar-a-Lago were in a Florida estate where hundreds of guests come and go for social occasions.
“They’re faking outrage even though they defended the former president’s actions,” Sams told reporters on Tuesday.
White House aides and allies pointed to the irony of Comer’s remarks in August when he brushed off Trump’s possession of classified materials.
“What I’ve seen that the National Archives was concerned about Trump having in his possession didn’t amount to a hill of beans,” Comer told Newsmax at the time.
In November, Comer also told CNN that a House investigation into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents would “not be a priority.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who served as the chief investigator in the first impeachment of Trump, told The Hill it’s “just the latest example of House Republicans abusing their oversight authority and demanding things they have argued against in the past.
“The American people are tired of Republican hypocrisy and Chairman Comer is not off to a good start, he said.
Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and the director of the public policy program at Hunter College, said Republicans like Comer were “willing to shield Trump from any public of governmental scrutiny while he was president but are hypocritically intent upon using all available congressional power at their disposal to unpack Biden’s life, shame him and discredit Democrats.”
In many ways, White House officials and their allies are happy to have this fight with Republicans, allies say because they are taking the bet that Trump’s baggage on this issue is worse than their own and has the potential of backfiring.
White House allies say Republicans will have a tough time explaining why Trump held on to the documents and then resisted the FBI. Biden, on the other hand has fully cooperated with the Department of Justice and the appointed special counsel.
“It’s ludicrous,” one Democratic strategist close to the White House said of the GOP.
“Do they really want to go there?" said one Democratic strategist close to the White House. "Didn't their guy have many more documents at his home? Didn't he try and stop people from taking them back?”
Republicans have used the controversy to blunt Biden’s trajectory weeks ahead of his expected announcement for reelection. They’ve sought to use the episode to paint Biden as corrupt.
“The Biden are just a Delaware version of the Sopranos,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote on Twitter.
Republican strategist Doug Heye said it’s fair game.
“Congress tends not to deeply investigate a White House of the same party,” Heye said. “That was true of Democrats last Congress and of Republicans under Trump.“
And he predicted that the controversy wouldn’t backfire on the GOP.
“This cuts at Biden’s argument that he and his team of pros won’t make the mistakes Trump and his Addams Family team made — on something Biden specifically criticized. And when Democrats say, but Trump was worse, well, okay but now you’re talking degrees and if you’re explaining you’re losing.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Thursday that he would consider expunging one or both of former President Trump’s impeachments.
“I would understand why members would want to bring that forward,” McCarthy said in response to a question at a press conference on Thursday, before listing off several other key priorities for House Republicans.
“But I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it,” he added.
In the last Congress, a group of more than 30 House Republicans led by Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) put forward a resolution to expunge Trump’s impeachment in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The resolution was supported by the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.).
A smaller group, again led by Mullin, also introduced a resolution to expunge Trump’s December 2019 impeachment for allegedly attempting to withhold military aid from Ukraine in an effort to pressure the country to investigate the business dealings of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
The Senate ultimately acquitted Trump in both impeachments, after failing to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict him.
Representative Pat Fallon, a Texas Republican, has filed articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Fallon had promised to move on impeachment once the 118th Congress was sworn in.
“Secretary Mayorkas’s willful actions have eroded our immigration system, undermined border patrol morale, and jeopardized American national security,” he tweeted. “He has violated the law and it is time for him to go.”
The resolution accuses the DHS Secretary of having “engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties.”
Keeping the homeland secure does seem to be one aspect in which the chief of Homeland Security has failed – and failed miserably.
In a statement to Fox News, Fallon cited Mayorkas’ lies to Congress that he had operational control of the border and his effort to smear Border Patrol agents with false allegations of ‘whipping’ illegal immigrants as reasons he has been derelict in his duties.
I have officially filed Articles of Impeachment on Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
— Rep. Pat Fallon (@RepPatFallon) January 10, 2023
The articles of impeachment accuse Alejandro Mayorkas of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and have been officially filed and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
New House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, during a visit to the border back in November, called for the DHS Secretary to resign or face an impeachment inquiry.
“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure and will determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” he told reporters.
This should give conservatives a glimpse of the kind of Speaker Kevin McCarthy will be and why I’m supporting him.
He’s demanding Mayorkas resign or face investigations leading to impeachment bc the cartels run our borderMore things like this to come.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@RepMTG) November 23, 2022
House Republicans have been warning for over a year that the border crisis was one aspect they would be investigating thoroughly when they take back control of the chamber.
“He clearly knew the truth and willfully misled Congress and then by extension, the American people.”@RepPatFallon has filed Articles of Impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for misleading Congress.@JohnFBachman @BiancaDLGarza
MORE: https://t.co/bdjRiEgWBn pic.twitter.com/9woDz6j4FC
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) January 10, 2023
Despite the threat of impeachment, Mayorkas isn’t expressing any real concern or urgency to change course at the border.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do, and we’re going to do it,” he said.
Why start now? It’s been two years and you haven’t done your job yet.
Mayorkas proceeded to blame Congress for the calamity at the southern border.
“We are dealing with a broken immigration system that Congress has failed to repair for decades,” he insisted in an interview with ABC News.
Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas rebuffs calls from leading Republicans to resign or risk impeachment.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do.” https://t.co/UOvUdoIa98 pic.twitter.com/wXYotJtcqm
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 8, 2023
A recent MSNBC report documented numerous illegal aliens who said they “haven’t had any interaction with U.S. immigration authorities” and “they just walked right in.”
That seems less a product of a broken system and more the incompetence of the head of DHS.
Deportations in 2021 were the lowest on record. In 2022, ICE deported 61% fewer illegal aliens than in 2020, including 66% fewer criminals, even though border crossings increased by 419%.
On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump weighed in on the border crisis.
Fmr Pres. Trump releases a statement about the border and how people are talking about it now since it’s a problem and it wasn’t under his administration. He adds, “Biden has allowed the cartels to destroy the border, and I’ll destroy the cartels!” pic.twitter.com/qAPxGJspbj
— Stephanie Myers (@_StephanieMyers) January 10, 2023
After suggesting nobody could talk about a border situation he “fixed” during his presidency, Trump declared it one of the biggest problems facing our nation today.
“It’s amazing what has happened in two years, because now the Border is probably our biggest bone of contention,” he said in a statement.
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Former President Trump responded Monday to the breaking news that the Justice Department is reviewing classified documents from President Biden’s tenure as vice president that were found last fall in a private office Biden had previously used.
“When is the FBI going to raid the many homes of Joe Biden, perhaps even the White House? These documents were definitely not declassified,” Trump said on his Truth Social account, sharing an article on the document discovery from CBS News.
The Obama-Biden era documents were found by the president’s attorneys while clearing out an office he used when he served as an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, according to Biden’s special counsel Richard Sauber.
Biden’s legal team notified the National Archives, which took possession of the materials, Sauber said. The documents are now reportedly being looked at by the U.S. attorney general for Chicago, with cooperation from the White House.
Trump was referring to the FBI’s execution of a search warrant last summer at his Mar-a-Lago residence, where investigators found more than a hundred classified documents kept past his time in the White House.
Trump is now under investigation for his handling of the classified materials.
“We were told for months that this was treasonous… grounds for impeachment... & meriting the death penalty, yet I have a feeling nothing will happen!?” wrote Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter, retweeting the CBS article.
Notably, Biden’s team notified the Archives and turned over the documents upon discovery, while Trump apparently kept classified materials even after requests from the Archives to return them.
The Presidential Records Act requires that presidential and vice presidential records be turned over to the National Archives at the end of a given administration for preservation and to protect classified material.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected Speaker of the House early Saturday morning, after weeks of haggling and a historic 15 roll call votes on the floor.
The lengthy Speakership fight — the first in a century to go past one ballot — played out largely in front of the public, as members repeatedly voted and sometimes negotiated on the floor of the House before C-SPAN’s cameras.
The battle for Speaker, particularly its culmination on Friday night and Saturday morning, produced a number of memorable moments. Here are five of the most dramatic and colorful:
Two Republican congressmen — Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) — rushed back to the Capitol on Friday to vote for McCarthy.
Buck had said he would return for Friday evening votes after being gone during the day for a “non-emergency medical procedure” he had to undergo back in his home state.
But Hunt had to change his plans. He returned home to Texas Friday morning to spend time with his wife and newborn son, who was born prematurely on Monday and spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“Willie needs his father and Emily needs her husband,” Hunt said in a tweet. “Today, I’ll be returning home to hold my son and be at my wife’s side. It’s my intention to get back into the fight as soon as possible.”
Both were McCarthy supporters and McCarthy's Speaker math meant he needed both of their votes to prevail.
Hunt flew back to Washington later Friday and was in the chamber in time to vote the first time his name was called, while Buck arrived in time to vote when they circled back to his name.
Both received a round of applause from their Republican colleagues.
Perhaps the more tense — and chaotic — moment of the night came after McCarthy lost his 14th Speakership vote, one Republicans were confident would be their last.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was among the last lawmakers to vote and because only one of the other five holdout Republicans — Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — had changed their vote to "present," a "present" vote from Gaetz wouldn't be enough to put McCarthy over the finish. McCarthy needed an affirmative vote from the Florida Republican.
Gaetz voted "present."
With tensions rising, a heated argument broke out between Gaetz and several McCarthy backers and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) appeared to take a step toward Gaetz before he was physically pulled back by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), eliciting gasps in the chamber.
As chaos ensued between then 14th and 15th votes, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had President Trump on the phone in an effort to whip the final votes for McCarthy.
A widely-circulated photo from Friday night showed Greene holding up her phone to Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), one the last six Republican holdouts. Rosendale appeared to refuse the phone call, whose caller ID read “DT.”
Greene later confirmed to The Hill that the phone call was in fact from Trump.
“It was the perfect phone call,” she added in a post on Twitter, a reference to Trump's comment about the phone call at the center of his first impeachment.
Trump also reportedly called other Republican holdouts on behalf of McCarthy and McCarthy credited Trump for helping him win the 15th ballot.
With Republicans seemingly at an impasse after a 14th failed vote, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) moved to adjourn the House until Monday.
The motion seemed to have enough GOP support to pass, but then McCarthy and other Republicans rushed to the dais to their change votes and stay in session.
McCarthy had seemingly locked down the votes he needed.
Several Republican lawmakers chanted “one more time” in anticipation of what would be the 15th and final ballot. With all six Republican holdouts changing their vote to "present," McCarthy was able to secure the Speakership with 216 votes just after midnight on Saturday.
As Republican infighting continued throughout the week, Democrats watched with a level of amusement, frequently mocking their GOP counterparts.
Several Democratic members brought out buckets of popcorn amid the drawn-out process.
"We are breaking the popcorn out in the Dem Caucus till the Republicans get their act together," Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said in a Twitter post on Tuesday, accompanied by a picture of large bucket of popcorn.
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) was seen during Friday's votes sitting and reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F---” by Mark Manson.
After McCarthy clinched the Speakership on Saturday morning, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also appeared to take a jab at the Republican conference, calling it an honor to “finally” welcome members to the 118th Congress.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson perhaps summed up yesterday’s chaos in the House the best, explaining why some true conservatives are not willing to vote for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.
“Kevin McCarthy of California was going to be Speaker,” Carlson said. “But then a group of 20 Republican members stopped him.”
He added, “They stopped him because they decided that Kevin McCarthy is not conservative enough to represent a party that’s just taking back the House from Nancy Pelosi.”
“And they are definitely right about that.”
If Kevin McCarthy wants to be Speaker, he’s going to have to give his colleagues something real — actual concessions. He can start with these two things. pic.twitter.com/tzTajZjgaU
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 4, 2023
RELATED: Donald Trump Loudly Backs Kevin McCarthy for Speaker, Blames Mitch McConnell For Chaos in the House
McCarthy, though, has the strong backing of former President Donald Trump. He sports an 88% rating in the current session from the conservative Heritage Action group (though his lifetime score from FreedomWorks is under 70%.)
He even has support from consistently strong MAGA supporters like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So what is the problem here? Why are 20 other right-leaning Republicans refusing to support his speakership?
“McCarthy is not especially conservative,” Carlson explains. “He is, in fact, ideologically agnostic. He’s flexible.”
And that flexibility has true conservatives concerned that he will be awarded the role and revert back to the all-too-familiar face of a false leader for the Republican message – like the Boehners and Ryans we’ve seen in the recent past.
Or, to revert back to McCarthy from 2012 to 2018, when his Heritage Action group rating was nearly indiscernible from Adam Kinzinger, ranging between 40% and 57%.
With that, we list off five stories from this past year alone that prove Kevin McCarthy may not be worthy of getting a clean vote for Speaker of the House.
In a move that is little different than that of Democrats and the FBI, McCarthy openly pondered the possibility of getting conservatives banned from social media.
Audio surfaced in April of the lawmaker denouncing fellow Republicans – particularly America First Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Mo Brooks (R-AL) – for ‘putting other lawmakers at risk’ with their comments about the 2020 election.
“Well, he’s putting people in jeopardy, and he doesn’t need to be doing this,” McCarthy said of Gaetz for referring to those unwilling to fight the 2020 election results as ‘anti-Trump.’ “We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know?”
“Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?” the California Republican would later ask.
His words prompted Carlson to denounce McCarthy as “a puppet of the Democratic Party.”
Tucker Carlson Calling Out Democrat Party Puppet @GOPLeader
“In a phone call reported today by the NYT, Congressman Kevin McCarthy told his close friend Liz Cheney that he hoped the social media companies would censor MORE Conservative Republicans in Congress.” pic.twitter.com/HRQMzaVva5
— The Columbia Bugle
More audiotapes released the following month featured McCarthy describing Trump’s actions surrounding the January 6th riot at the Capitol as “atrocious.”
He would later discuss options such as invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office but ultimately decided it would take “too long.”
“Look, what the president did is atrocious and totally wrong,” McCarthy said of Trump in a call recorded on January 8th.
What Trump did was urge protesters concerned about election integrity to make their voices “peacefully” and “patriotically” heard.
Their book is out today.. but @jmartNYT & @alexburnsNYT are still dropping audio bombs.
This time Kevin McCarthy says:
“What the president did is atrocious and totally wrong.”Full story: https://t.co/lLGEf1uiD9 pic.twitter.com/Ag0mbDsmhb
— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) May 4, 2022
The Washington Post reported in September that McCarthy “worked” previously “to deny (Madison) Cawthorn a second term in office,” saying he had “lost my trust.”
Cawthorn had been endorsed by Trump at the time, but had accused members of Congress of using drugs and inviting him to an “orgy.”
The well-planned targeting by McCarthy didn’t simply focus on Madison Cawthorn. The House Republican leader also sought to keep other MAGA candidates out of Congress.
The Post wrote that Kevin McCarthy and his political machine were working to “systematically weed out GOP candidates” they felt might give him “trouble” as House Speaker.
It was also an effort to eliminate conservative candidates in districts where more moderate candidates were perceived to have a better chance of winning.
Scoop: Kevin McCarthy’s allies helped sink Madison Cawthorn. A look at how the would-be Speaker’s political machine worked to keep the most Ultra MAGA out of Congress w/ @jdawsey1 @iarnsdorf @MariannaReports https://t.co/hLhJJcUpJj
— Michael Scherer (@michaelscherer) September 27, 2022
McCarthy, just a couple of weeks before the midterm elections, took a motivating issue for many voters of impeaching President Biden and declared it would not happen.
In an interview with Punchbowl News, McCarthy admitted that should the GOP win back congressional control in the 2022 midterms, they would not pursue impeachment.
“I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” said McCarthy. “If anyone ever rises to that occasion, you have to, but I think the country wants to heal and … start to see the system that actually works.”
He later lamented the fact that Democrats had sought the impeachment of Trump before he took office and suggested the GOP had to be better than that.
“You watch what the Democrats did – they all came out and said they would impeach before Trump was ever sworn in,” he said. “There wasn’t a purpose for it.”
If anything, that means they lowered the bar and that’s the level at which the GOP must fight back. If Trump were President and Democrats controlled the House, do you think they’d pump the breaks on impeachment and insist the country needs to heal?
NEW in @PunchbowlNews AM — MCCARTHY on investigations if House Rs take the majority.
TOP LINE: @GOPLeader is quite bearish on impeachment.
Check out what he told us pic.twitter.com/jboHv9NPoX
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 19, 2022
McCarthy announced in late October that when the GOP takes control of the House, Ukraine would no longer be the benefactor of a “blank check” from the United States government.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “They just won’t do it. … It’s not a free blank check.”
About a week later, allies of the Republican lawmaker were furiously backpedaling on the statement.
“McCarthy was not saying, ‘We wouldn’t spend money.’ McCarthy was saying, ‘We’re gonna be accountable to the taxpayer for every dollar we spend,’” one lawmaker told CNN.
It was an effort, CNN said, to “soothe the House’s senior defense hawks.”
Which is a super-neat way to say he was talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Inside the House GOP effort to keep weapons flowing to Ukraine. A deep dive, looking at what GOPers are doing as they prep for next year, w/ @jeremyherb @MZanona @KatieBoLillis. https://t.co/EmjsfcQbK7
— Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) October 26, 2022
The House will again convene at noon today with a fourth round of voting for Speaker of the House to be likely.
Trump has urged those in opposition to McCarthy’s speakership to “close the deal” and “take the victory.”
With this list of his behavior in recent memory, we’re not sure it would be a great victory.
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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, mocked conspiracy theories about who was responsible for the attack on the Capitol.
“This is not an Agatha Christie novel, we know exactly whodunnit,” he told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in an interview on Friday.
Raskin referred to unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories that antifa was responsible for the attack, saying the proponents of such theories should “bring the evidence forward” if they have any, but the bipartisan committee found no evidence of antifa being involved.
“It’s just impossible to think of any of this happening without Donald Trump being the central instigator of the whole thing,” he said.
Raskin’s comments come after the committee released its final report on the attack on Thursday, concluding that Trump was the "central cause" of what happened that day. The committee made four criminal referrals for Trump to the Justice Department (DOJ), the first time a congressional committee has recommended criminal charges for a former president.
The four charges the committee referred to the DOJ against Trump are obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements and inciting or providing aid and comfort to those participating in an insurrection.
The committee has also released dozens of transcripts from its interviews with key witnesses, including Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, former Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Raskin said the committee believes it has “comprehensive and overwhelming documentary proof” of all the charges it referred against Trump.
“We were, if anything, very conservative and very cautious in the charges that we advanced,” he said.
He said the committee hopes and trusts that the DOJ and special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the department’s investigation, will do their job to hold “kingpins” involved responsible.
“There needs to be a serious reckoning of individual accountability for the people that set all of these events into motion,” Raskin said.
He also noted that Trump was the one who got the Capitol rioters to protest on Jan. 6. He said the groups were originally going to protest on Jan. 21, one day after President Biden was inaugurated, but Trump pushed for the day that Congress was set to read the votes of the Electoral College.
“He was the one that galvanized the extreme right in the country to focus on the peaceful transfer of power as the target of their wrath and violence,” Raskin said.
He said he believes Republicans who voted to acquit Trump during his second impeachment trial over his involvement in the insurrection are having “quitter’s remorse” as Trump has been “exposed to the world as the person who orchestrated all of these events to try to topple our constitutional order.”
“They’re very afraid that if they don’t nominate him, he will take 30 or 40 percent of the party with him,” Raskin said, referring to Trump’s candidacy for president in 2024. “And that could be the end of the GOP.”
