Category: House

Greene ousted from Freedom Caucus, board member says 

Posted on (Updated by Emily Brooks

The hard-line House Freedom Caucus has voted to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from its ranks, according to Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), a caucus board member.

“A vote was taken to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from the House Freedom Caucus for some of the things she's done,” Harris told Politico and CNN on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) would not confirm whether the group voted to remove Greene, pointing to its policy of confidentiality.

“HFC does not comment on membership or internal process,” they said.

In a statement responding to news, Greene did not directly address her membership status in the House Freedom Caucus. 

"In Congress, I serve Northwest Georgia first, and serve no group in Washington. My America First credentials, guided by my Christian faith, are forged in steel, seared into my character, and will never change," she said.

"I fight every single day in the halls of congress against the hate-America Democrats, who are trying to destroy this country. I will work with ANYONE who wants to secure our border, protect our children inside the womb and after they are born, end the forever foreign wars, and do the work to save this country. The GOP has less than two years to show America what a strong, unified Republican-led congress will do when President Trump wins the White House in 2024. This is my focus, nothing else,” Greene concluded.

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Asked if Greene is now formally out of the group, Harris said: “As far as I know, that is the way it is.”

The vote to remove Greene from the group comes after she broke with many of her colleagues on supporting the debt bill deal Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) struck with President Biden. She has become a close ally of McCarthy, supporting him for Speaker even as opposition from many of her Freedom Caucus colleagues forced a historic 15-ballot election in January.

“I think all of that mattered,” Harris said, referring to the debt bill and Greene’s support for McCarthy.

But it was Greene’s latest clash with fellow firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) that appears to have pushed members to vote to remove her, with Harris calling it “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Greene called Boebert a “little bitch” on the House floor in late June — and publicly confirmed doing so — after Boebert made a surprise move to force action on her articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Greene criticized Boebert for not coming to explain her decision to the House GOP conference and accused Boebert of copying her articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.

“I think the way she referred to a fellow member was probably not the way we expect our members to refer to their fellow, especially female, members,” Harris said.

The vote, first reported by Politico last week, took place the morning before the House left for a two-week recess ahead of Independence Day.

Harris would not say how he voted but praised House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) as being a “true leader” and doing a “great job.”

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But the move to oust Greene is drawing some outside criticism of Perry and the caucus as a whole.

“If I’m Scott Perry, this is the last thing I want making headlines leading into three weeks of session before the August recess,” a senior Republican aide told The Hill. "All of the continuous drama surrounding HFC has put their members at odds of getting any agenda items passed. It has to be tiring for leadership."

The most pressing battle between members of the House Freedom Caucus and House GOP leadership is over appropriations and spending levels. Last month, a portion of members from the group and their allies blocked legislative activity on the House floor for a week in protest of topline spending levels set in the debt limit bill.

Members of the group have regularly met with leadership about spending levels in the weeks since, but they left for the two-week break with disagreements remaining.

Beyond the spending levels, members of the Freedom Caucus caused more headaches for leadership with privileged motions to force action on their measures. In addition to Boebert’s move to force action on Mayorkas impeachment articles, which were ultimately referred back to committees, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) forced action on a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) over his statements about former President Trump.

This story was updated at 5:52 p.m.

DOJ, Hunter Biden team fight back on GOP probes 

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

Justice Department officials and Hunter Biden’s attorneys are ramping up their pushback against Republican claims the president’s son received preferential treatment during the investigation into his failure to pay taxes.

Republicans released a transcript from an IRS whistleblower who questioned the integrity of the Biden tax probe just days after his attorney announced they reached an agreement with DOJ officials in Delaware that would mean no jail time but require Biden to plead guilty in relation to two tax crimes.  

The deal — which has yet to be approved by a judge — and the investigation are already the subject of a three-committee probe after IRS investigator Gary Shapley alleged the criminal investigation was slow-walked by the DOJ. 

But the GOP focus on Biden is now generating a firmer response, particularly since Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested the episode could be grounds for impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

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Former GOP rep, Jan. 6 select committee adviser working with Hunter Biden legal team

Hunter Biden’s lawyer blasts IRS whistleblowers in scathing letter to GOP committee chair

One of Biden’s attorneys late last week penned a blistering letter accusing House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) of violating provisions that protect the confidentiality of tax information in his rush to release Shapley's testimony.

“Since taking the majority in 2023, various leaders of the House and its committees have discarded the established protocols of Congress, rules of conduct, and even the law in what can only be called an obsession with attacking the Biden family,” Biden attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a 10-page letter.  

“The timing of the agents’ leaks and your subsequent decision to release their statements do not seem innocent — they came shortly after there was a public filing indicating the disposition of the five-year investigation of Mr. Biden. To any objective eye your actions were intended to improperly undermine the judicial proceedings that have been scheduled in the case. Your release of this selective set of false allegations was an attempt to score a headline in a news cycle — full facts be damned,” the letter continued. 

Lowell complains the agents who spoke to the panel — Shapley and another unidentified person — had an “axe to grind” and assumed they knew better than prosecutors managing the five-year investigation.  

Shapley asserts in his testimony that U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss asked for a special counsel to charge Biden in the District of Columbia, where more egregious tax conduct occurred, but was denied. Shapley also said D.C. District Attorney Matthew Graves opposed bringing charges in the District of Columbia.  

But Weiss has strongly rejected any claims his office did not zealously pursue the case, pushing back on the whistleblower’s claims. Weiss, a Trump appointee who was one of the few U.S. attorneys asked to stay on after President Biden took office, told lawmakers in June he had complete authority over how to handle the investigation. 

Weiss late Friday said in a letter to Congress that he could have asked for special counsel status if he wished to bring charges in Washington, and he was assured that option was available. 

“In my June 7 letter I stated, ‘I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.’ ... I stand by what I wrote and wish to expand on what this means,” Weiss said. 

“As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district. If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” he added. 

“If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here, I have been assured that, if necessary after the above process, I would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.” 

Weiss has agreed to meet with the committee to discuss the investigation further “at the appropriate time.” 

Graves has denied stymying the Hunter Biden investigation, while Garland has said Weiss had full control to make any decisions he deemed necessary in the case. 

The contradiction between the whistleblower and Weiss about where to charge Biden, and whether a special counsel and charging in D.C. was denied, is at the core of the House Speaker’s interest in an impeachment inquiry targeting Garland. 

McCarthy said Garland’s assertion before Congress and the public that Weiss had full control over the investigation could be grounds for impeachment if it’s determined that Shapley’s testimony is true.  

“He didn't get charged for some of the highest prosecution. They want to have a special counsel. And now we're seeing that the DOJ, the attorney general, declined that, even though he's saying something different,” McCarthy said on Fox News last week. “None of it smells right, and none of it is right.” 

Republicans have ramped up their investigations since the plea deal. 

Smith, along with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), requested interviews with more than a dozen figures involved in the investigation to determine whether there was “equal enforcement of the law.” 

The panel wishes to speak with numerous FBI, IRS and DOJ employees.  

“It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the Department of Justice despite statutory protections established by law. These whistleblowers bravely came forward with allegations about misconduct and preferential treatment for Hunter Biden — and now face attacks even from an army of lawyers he hired,” Smith said in response to the letter from Lowell. 

“Worse, this letter misleads the public about the lawful actions taken by the Ways and Means Committee, which took the appropriate legal steps to share this information with [the] rest of Congress. It doesn’t even address concerns that counsel for Mr. Biden was regularly tipped off about potential warrants and raids in pursuit of evidence that implicated him, as well as his father. We will continue to go where the facts take us — and we will not abandon our investigation just because Mr. Biden’s lawyers don’t like it,” Smith added. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Wednesday spearheaded a letter signed by the three House chairmen asking for the Office of Special Counsel to review any potential retaliation against Shapley and the other whistleblower since they came forward.  

Shapley on Monday also submitted an affidavit saying he was not the source of leaks to the media about the Biden investigation, a possibility Lowell raises in his letter. 

Biden last month struck a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to tax crimes and enter into a pretrial diversion program relating to unlawful possession of a weapon. The charges come after a five-year investigation into him. 

Weiss said in a statement at the time the investigation was “ongoing.” 

Garland has said he remained uninvolved in Weiss’s investigation, arguing the U.S. attorney’s independence was key to ensure a proper investigation was led by the facts. 

He also defended the integrity of the Justice Department more broadly, pushing back on GOP claims of political bias. 

“Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department … by claiming we do not treat like cases alike. This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy and essential to the safety of the American people,” Garland said in a recent press conference. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” 

Gaetz suggests eliminating marijuana testing of service members

Posted on (Updated by Joe Jacquez

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would eliminate marijuana testing of service members when they are enlisted and when they receive a commission.

"Our military is facing a recruitment and retainment crisis unlike any other time in American history. I do not believe that prior use of cannabis should exclude Americans from enlisting in the armed forces. We should embrace them for stepping up to serve our country,” Gaetz said in a statement.

An increasing number of recruits have tested positive for cannabis, including in states where marijuana is legal. Almost 33 percent more recruits tested positive in 2022 compared to 2020, according to The New York Times.

As more states legalize marijuana for recreational use, the U.S. government has relaxed guidelines around drug testing, including in the military.

More than 3,400 new military recruits who failed a drug test on their first day were given a grace period to test again in the past five years, according to the Times.

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Medical marijuana is legal in 38 states and Washington, D.C., and recreational marijuana is legal in 22 states and D.C., according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but the drug is still illegal under federal law.

Gaetz's amendment is one of a handful that have been proposed around cannabis and the military.

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Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and David Joyce (R-Ohio) of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus proposed allowing the Department of Veterans Affairs to give medical opinions on cannabis as a treatment for patients in states where the drug is legal.

In addition, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) proposed an amendment that would allow service members to consume legal CBD products.

The Pentagon said in a statement that "as a general practice, we do not comment on pending legislation."

— Updated at 7:32 p.m.

McCarthy’s latest challenge: Prevent shutdown while avoiding GOP revolt

Posted on (Updated by Mike Lillis

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is fresh from a successful effort to raise the debt ceiling but now faces what might be an even tougher challenge: preventing a government shutdown without sparking an all-out revolt within his own Republican conference. 

House GOP leaders return to Washington next week after a long Independence Day recess with one major item on the summer docket: moving 12 appropriations bills to the Senate and putting pressure on upper-chamber Democrats to swallow some Republican priorities. 

Yet the GOP conference is sharply divided in its approach to 2024 spending, pitting centrists and leadership allies — who concede the need for a bipartisan compromise on government funding — against conservative hard-liners demanding deep cuts, back to 2022 levels, in defiance of the deal McCarthy cut with President Biden earlier in the month.

The dynamics set the stage for a punishing July for McCarthy and GOP leaders, who are racing to win over the conservative holdouts and move the spending bills with just a razor-thin majority that allows scant room for defections. 

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Complicating their effort, the conservative hard-liners — who felt burned by McCarthy’s handling of the debt ceiling package — say they’ve taken a lesson from that fight and are now vowing to use their considerable leverage, as well as hardball tactics, to force the Speaker to hold a tougher line in the spending debate. If the government shuts down in the process, they say that’s a price they’re willing to pay.

The factors have combined to highlight the tenuous grip McCarthy has on his conference, heighten the threat to his Speakership and increase the odds of a government shutdown later in the year.

To say McCarthy’s task is difficult, said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), is “the understatement of possibly the decade.”

"But difficult is not impossible,” he quickly added. “We're more united than perhaps the mainstream media would give us credit for.” 

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Central to the fight is a promise McCarthy made to his conservative detractors in January, as a condition of winning their support for his Speakership, to fight to cut next year’s spending back to last year’s levels. McCarthy, backed by top GOP appropriators, says they’re ready to make good on that vow. But the conservatives are skeptical, accusing the Speaker of using budget gimmicks, known as rescissions, to disguise higher levels of spending — a strategy the conservatives say they’ll oppose. 

McCarthy huddled with members of the far-right Freedom Caucus just before the recess in an effort to persuade the hard-liners that he shares their deficit-cutting goals. But no agreements were made, and conservatives left the meeting unconvinced of McCarthy’s commitment to the steep cuts they’re demanding — clear evidence that GOP leaders still lack the votes to pass their bills. 

“People are still searching for how we resolve that, and how we form unity around a single idea with respect to how the appropriations are getting resolved,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a frequent McCarthy critic. 

“We had an agreement on fiscal year 2022 discretionary spending levels,” he added. “I’m not persuaded by the notion that starting there and then buying those up with rescissions amounts to the performance of that objective.”

Still, McCarthy and his allies remain optimistic that they can move the 12 spending bills, not only through committee but also on the floor, in time to avoid a short-term spending patch in September, known as a continuing resolution, or CR. 

“[We’re] making sure that we stay on schedule to get the bills done, don't put ourselves into a situation where we take too much time and are unable to do a negotiation,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a close McCarthy ally, told reporters just before the break. “That doesn't play into our hands very well and it ends up pushing you into [a] CR path, where I don't think we really want to be.”

While the House is marking up spending bills below the levels agreed to in the debt limit bill — an attempt to appease conservatives — the Senate kicked off the appropriations process using the numbers from the original agreement, putting the two chambers on a collision course and further raising the chances of a government shutdown.

At least one moderate House Republican, however, predicts that the Senate will prevail in the chamber vs. chamber battle, which would deal a blow to conservatives and likely spark a right-wing headache for McCarthy.

“When it’s all said and done, you're gonna end up with the debt ceiling agreement,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told The Hill late last month. “Because the Senate’s not gonna go more conservative, and we’re not gonna let them spend more.”

Upping the pressure another notch, the debt limit deal struck by Biden and McCarthy included a provision that incentivizes Congress to pass all 12 appropriations bills by threatening to cut government spending by 1 percent across the board if the measures are not approved by Jan. 1, 2024.

So far, the House Appropriations Committee has cleared half of the partisan bills, with hopes of approving the remaining six bills in the coming weeks.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who serves on the appropriations panel, told The Hill before the recess that the “best outcome” would be if the GOP-led House is able to get all 12 bills across the floor. But he also said “leadership needs to see, can they produce these bills.”

“Can they get them across the floor?” he said. “If they do — and again, that will have to be without Democratic support, just like it was for the debt ceiling — they were in a position to sit down and have a genuine negotiation.”

A failure of House Republicans to pass their partisan appropriations bills as a starting point in the coming negotiations with the Senate would diminish the GOP’s leverage in that battle. 

Republican leaders have credited House passage of their previous partisan plan to raise the debt ceiling, along with proposals to slash trillions of dollars in government spending, as key in getting Democrats to swallow some of those cuts. 

The final bipartisan plan was much more modest than the proposal initially passed by Republicans in late April. However, GOP leaders say party unity was critical in strengthening McCarthy’s hand at the negotiating table with Biden.

To achieve the same unity in the spending debate, however, the Speaker must toe a difficult line in the weeks ahead as he works to secure more pull in the future talks with Democrats. Leaving town late last month, GOP leaders said the internal discussions would continue through the break. And lawmakers of all stripes said there is one goal in mind: "We're gonna do whatever we can to make sure that we cut as much as we can and maintain 218 [votes]," said Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.). 

That’s a tall order, given the current divisions and the closing window before government funding expires Oct. 1. But even many conservatives predict they will ultimately prevail. 

“The devil's in the details, of course,” Higgins said. “[But] we are united in purpose, and I envision us getting to 218.”

Swing district House Republicans timidly remind McCarthy they exist, too

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

The far-right House Freedom Caucus’s antics have gotten so bad that Republicans who represent districts won by President Joe Biden have actually started trying to affect what legislation comes to the House floor. They’re not trying very hard, mind you—whining to the media remains their main weapon, and they’ll get outsized credit for anything they accomplish, including the whining, but doing slightly more than nothing is a change.

The Washington Post reports, “In recent weeks, these lawmakers have kept some abortion-related measures from being put to a vote and sunk an amendment that would have derailed a government oversight bill.” Okay, that’s a start, as is the successful effort by some first-term New York Republicans to sink anti-union amendments.

It continues: “They also have tried to convince their far-right counterparts to avoid altering appropriation bills during committee markups, warning that any poison pills could force a big enough group to reject the bills on the House floor if they feel they could hurt their reelection chances.” They’ve tried. Huh. Is that new? Were swing district Republicans not trying to do that all along?

This, though—this is special:

Several lawmakers who represent districts President Biden won have also asked leadership to go a step further and allow them in the negotiating room with their far-right colleagues during high-profile debates to explain why the groups’ demands could jeopardize their five-vote majority, according to two people familiar with the request who, like others who spoke to The Washington Post, did so on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations.

They’re asking to be allowed in the negotiating room. Doesn’t that seem like something that would have happened on Day One? Doesn’t it seem like Kevin McCarthy might have asked them himself?

Swing-district Republicans also have been pushing leadership to be strategic about which messaging bills they bring to the floor, arguing it’s not worth forcing vulnerable members to take tough votes on legislation that will die in the Senate.

I don’t know, all of this seems like something leadership might have figured out for itself. If Kevin McCarthy were a competent leader who hadn’t given away every shred of leverage he possessed to squeak in as speaker on the 15th vote, maybe it would have.

Some swing district Republicans say they’re nervously looking ahead to being put on the spot about expunging Donald Trump’s impeachments. Yet when it came to votes on referring Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Biden impeachment resolution to two committees and on censuring Rep. Adam Schiff, the so-called moderates knew their place. Those were party-line votes.

These Republicans should get credit for doing the right thing to the exact extent that they do the right thing. No bonus points for whining to the media. And when the media does report on them, be it the whining or the actually getting things done, those moments they fell in line on the extreme votes need to be included in the coverage.

GOP’s ‘dereliction of duty’ impeachment argument gets skeptical reviews 

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

Republicans eager to impeach a Biden administration official have rallied around a new phrase to justify the rarely used move, accusing President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of “dereliction of duty.” 

The term, borrowed from the military, allows a court martial to punish service members who fail to obey orders or carry out their duties. 

But experts say the GOP’s basis for removing either man from office is an odd fit for impeachment, which requires demonstrating high crimes or misdemeanors. 

“It sounds quasi-official — it has a sort of military ring to it. But it's not as though high crimes and misdemeanors and dereliction of duty go together. … It's not traditionally one of the impeachment concepts that you would find in the panoply of presidential mistakes,” said Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in national security law and democratic governance.  

“They're looking for a phrase that will kind of draw people in because it sounds semi-official, but will not actually require them to say something true and correct, like, ‘The President has actually done such and such,’” she added. 

The impeachment resolution for Biden introduced by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) accuses Biden of dereliction of duty and abuses of power in connection with how he has handled the border. 

“Since his first day in office, President Biden has trampled on the Constitution through his dereliction of duty under Article 2, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Instead of enforcing our immigration laws, he has lawlessly ignored them,” Boebert said on the House floor this month before Republicans voted to refer the measure to committee.  

Each of the four impeachment resolutions targeting Mayorkas similarly accuses him of violating his oath of office by failing to enforce immigration laws. 

The House Homeland Security Committee, which has been tasked with an investigation that would be used as the basis for any impeachment effort undertaken by House Judiciary, likewise kicked off its five-step plan with a phase dedicated to reviewing dereliction of duty. 

“The blatant disregard for the Constitution of the United States, which states that the United States Congress passes the laws and the executive branch executes those laws, is just scratching the surface to the harm Secretary Mayorkas’s dereliction of duty has done to our country,” said Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the committee's chairman, in a press conference earlier this month kicking off the formal investigation. 

“Mayorkas’s dereliction of duty has placed the safety of Americans’ second to his own personal agenda," Green added.

For Democrats, the GOP complaints over how the administration is applying — or failing to apply — the laws passed by Congress show the underlying dispute is a policy matter and therefore insufficient grounds for impeachment. 

“Dereliction of duty is something that they have created out of whole cloth,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who served as a lead counsel to Democrats in the first impeachment of former President Trump before being elected to Congress. 

“It has never been a grounds for impeachment. It is not a high crime and misdemeanor, and it is essentially arguing that they don't like the way that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have been handling their jobs, which, unfortunately for them, is the consequence of elections,” Goldman said. 

Impeachment proceedings have been used four times for a president and once for a cabinet secretary. 

There are different interpretations of what constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor, and Finkelstein said while impeachment can be used for “bad acts that are not criminal, very often the impeachment charges could also be charged as crimes.” 

“President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas haven't violated the law. And I suspect that members of the GOP and Congress know that full well, and so they don't want to use any term that suggests that there may be a legal violation here. And so they're using this sort of made-up term that has a quasi-military frame to sound vaguely official, but it's really nothing that corresponds to what we would understand from the history of impeachment as a high crime and misdemeanor as the framers would have conceived,” she said. 

The dereliction of duty argument has taken a greater focus in recent weeks amid waning numbers of people arriving at the border. Earlier this year, many in the GOP argued that Mayorkas failed to follow a law that requires perfection at the border to achieve “operational control.” 

Republicans have become more focused on arguing that Biden officials have violated immigration laws, particularly those dealing with detaining and releasing migrants that arrive at the border. 

They also see a wave of fentanyl deaths as a failure to secure the border, though the vast majority of fentanyl that enters the U.S. is believed to come through ports of entry. 

The Department of Homeland Security has argued Mayorkas has acted within his authority because the U.S. simply doesn't have the capacity to detain every person that seeks to enter the country, while parole laws allow DHS to permit some migrants to enter the U.S. while they await a determination in immigration court as to securing a more permanent legal status. The department has repeatedly encouraged Congress to take action to update immigration laws. 

The White House, meanwhile, dismissed Boebert’s resolution as “staging baseless political stunts.”  

“What you would need in order to move forward with impeachment is some finding that they have violated the law,” Goldman said. 

“So the notion that he’s violated his oath of office is just simply saying that he in their view is not following the law, but what it amounts to without any evidence — and they have none — is just a disagreement about how we're dealing with the influx of migrants into this country who are largely escaping completely devastated governments [and] catastrophic situations,” he said, adding that the Biden administration has tried to deal with that “in a humane way.” 

When asked about the legal underpinnings of dereliction of duty by The Hill, Green pointed to the statutes governing the military and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). 

“The United States is not secure. His job is to secure the United States. He's failed. That's a dereliction of his duty,” Green said, noting the oath he took when entering West Point. 

“Mayorkas’s oath is the same, right? It's not to the geography of America. It's not to the flag. It’s to the Constitution, the idea of America and to the way the Constitution orchestrates how the government is to work.”  

The roots in the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be problematic for making a case. 

“Neither Biden nor Mayorkas are subject to the UCMJ because they’re both civilians,” Finkelstein said. “Dereliction of duty as a military term does not apply to the Secretary of Homeland Security, nor does it apply to the president.” 

Impatience, however, is growing among some in the Republican Party.  

Lawmakers have introduced 11 impeachment resolutions for various Biden administration officials in the past two months. 

“I would hope that it would be this year — and very soon,” Boebert told reporters last week.  

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who served as an impeachment manager for Trump’s first impeachment, dismissed the efforts as another example of Republicans “dragging down the institution of Congress.” 

“I am concerned that as they always do, they use a process that is properly applied as a precedent to abuse the process. But this is all about ingratiating yourself among MAGA members and Trump followers and it's disgraceful,” he said. 

“It’s consuming the time of Congress to keep going through these right-wing exercises designed to gain Trump's favor.” 

GOP hit list: Biden officials targeted by Republicans for impeachment

Posted on (Updated by Alex Gangitano

House Republicans are grappling over whether to move forward with impeaching President Biden and a host of his top officials, putting a spotlight on how the conference has turned to impeachment as a tool to target administration officials.

Republicans disagree over how hard to push for impeachment because some are worried the efforts could backfire after the party heavily criticized Democrats for their House impeachments of former President Trump.

Here’s a look at who House Republicans are targeting for impeachment, and why they are doing so.

President Biden

President Joe Biden speaks during an event about high speed internet infrastructure, in the East Room of the White House, Monday, June 26, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Joe Biden speaks during a Monday event about high-speed internet infrastructure, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

It’s far from clear that most Republicans want to move forward with impeachment proceedings against Biden.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) introduced a procedural measure to force a floor vote on her impeachment articles, which led to internal sparring and a days-long clash between GOP leaders and the congresswoman. The House voted to punt the resolution to committees and avoid making lawmakers vote on it on the floor.

The resolution, which many Republicans deemed as premature, accused Biden of “a complete and total invasion at the southern border.” The resolution includes two articles related to Biden’s handling of matters along the U.S.-Mexico border — one for dereliction of duty and one for abuse of power.

During the last Congress, GOP lawmakers in the minority introduced several impeachment resolutions against Biden, targeting him on immigration, the COVID pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Boebert’s move was an escalation that threatened to put vulnerable moderates in the caucus in a tough spot if they had to vote on it.

There are other voices in the GOP calling for Biden’s impeachment.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News this week that congressional Republicans “absolutely should” look into impeachment. Her comments followed an IRS whistleblower’s claims about tax crime investigations into the president’s son Hunter Biden.

But Boebert’s push has been dismissed by some in her party as frivolous.

“I’ve got a pretty high bar for impeachment,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said last week. “I fear that snap impeachments will become the norm, and they mustn’t.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland

Attorney General Merrick Garland

Attorney General Merrick Garland during a Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee answers a question during a hearing to discuss the President’s FY 2024 budget for the Department of Justice on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Greg Nash)

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brought up impeaching Garland this week, tying it to the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigations into Hunter Biden.

McCarthy said an impeachment inquiry could be warranted over alleged political bias and DOJ “weaponization.” The push has been fueled by an IRS whistleblower’s claims, denied by Garland, that there was political interference in tax crime investigations into Hunter Biden.

“Someone has lied here,” McCarthy said Wednesday on Fox News. “If we find that Garland has lied to Congress, we will start an impeachment inquiry.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed articles of impeachment against Garland last summer over the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for classified and sensitive documents.

“If the whistleblowers’ allegations are true, this will be a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland’s weaponization of DOJ,” McCarthy said in a tweet. 

McCarthy’s focus on Garland is a change in how he has handled calls from Republicans to impeach other members of the Biden administration. He has vowed any impeachment proceedings would not be political.

The White House has bashed the idea of a Garland impeachment inquiry, saying it is an effort to distract from the economy and other topics top of mind for Americans.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at a news conference on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, ahead of the lifting of Title 42. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at a March 10 news conference ahead of the lifting of Title 42. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Republicans, led by Greene and fellow Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Pat Fallon (Texas), have targeted Mayorkas with articles of impeachment over the flow of migrants at the southern border.

House Republicans have held multiple hearings focused on what they describe as Mayorkas’s “dereliction of duty,” and mishandling of border policy, pointing to surges of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border that set records in 2022.

“I just think that more and more people are starting to come around to the necessity to impeach the guy,” Biggs said.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) recently announced the panel would kick off a formal investigation of Mayorkas as a necessary step ahead of an impeachment inquiry.

The focus on Mayorkas has drawn criticism from Democrats who believe Republicans are resorting to impeachment over what amounts to a disagreement over immigration policy.

Homeland Security also has pushed back on GOP arguments over the border while largely blaming Congress for the problems.

The push to impeach Mayorkas has also been complicated by a drop in apprehensions at the southern border in the weeks after the Biden administration ended Title 42, which had been in place since 2020 and allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants.

FBI Director Christopher Wray

FBI Director Christopher Wray

FBI Director Christopher Wray gives an opening statement during an April 27 hearing to discuss President Biden's fiscal 2023 budget request for the FBI. (Greg Nash)

Greene in May said she would target Wray and introduce articles of impeachment against him. 

The congresswoman argued that Way turned the FBI into Biden and Garland’s “personal police force” and that the FBI has “intimidated, harassed, and entrapped” U.S. citizens who have been “deemed enemies of the Biden regime.”

While citing some FBI actions that she argued show the agency overreached, Greene referred to the plot that multiple men had in 2020 plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). She noted that two of the men were acquitted after defense attorneys argued that the FBI entrapped them and convinced them to engage in the conspiracy.

She also mentioned that the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for classified and sensitive documents, arguing that the former president didn’t break any laws. Trump has been indicted by a Miami jury over his handling of the records.

Wray is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on July 12.

The hearing comes after the Republican-led House Oversight Committee threatened to hold Wray in contempt over his initial refusal to turn over a document detailing an unverified tip that GOP lawmakers claim shows then-Vice President Biden’s involvement in a bribery scheme. The panel later backed off its contempt threat.

The FBI and Justice Department as a whole have become common targets for conservatives, who have repeatedly claimed federal law enforcement is biased against Republicans and has been weaponized. Those claims have been supercharged by the federal indictment of Trump on charges over his retention of classified government documents after he left office.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer blasts IRS whistleblowers in scathing letter to GOP committee chair

Posted on (Updated by Julia Shapero

A lawyer for Hunter Biden blasted two IRS whistleblowers who claimed there was political interference in the investigation into the president’s son in a scathing letter to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.

Biden attorney Abbe Lowell slammed Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.), alleging that the committee’s decision to release the testimony of the two IRS agents last week was “an obvious ploy to feed the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father,” according to the letter obtained by Axios.

Gary Shapley, an IRS supervisory special agent, claimed in an interview with the House Ways and Means Committee that Biden received “preferential treatment” and that the Justice Department “slow-walked” its investigation into the president’s son.

Two days before the committee released the transcripts, Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor offenses for failing to pay income taxes in 2017 and 2018, in addition to entering into a pretrial diversion agreement on a separate charge of unlawful possession of a firearm while addicted to a controlled substance.

Lowell criticized Smith in Friday’s letter for improperly releasing tax and investigation information and disseminating “incomplete half-truths, distortions, and totally unnecessary detail” about Biden.

“It is no secret these interviews were orchestrated recitations of mischaracterized and incomplete ‘facts’ by disgruntled agents who believed they knew better than the federal prosecutors who had all the evidence as they conducted their five-year investigation of Mr. Biden,” Lowell said.

In the wake of the accusations by the IRS whistleblowers, Attorney General Merrick Garland has maintained that the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney overseeing the case, David Weiss, had full authority to decide what charges to bring against the president’s son.

After Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) floated the idea of an impeachment inquiry into Garland, the White House slammed House Republicans, suggesting that they were “desperate to distract” from their economic agenda.

Smith, alongside House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), requested interviews with more than a dozen individuals involved in the Biden investigation on Thursday.

Oversight Dems argue GOP overlooked information undercutting Biden allegation

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

A Ukrainian oligarch who ran the energy company that hired Hunter Biden to serve on its board told associates of Rudy Giuliani that Burisma never had any contacts with then-Vice President Biden while his son worked at the company.

The conversation with Mykola Zlochevsky, part of the package of information received by lawmakers during former President Trump’s first impeachment, was highlighted by the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee as evidence undercutting a GOP-led probe into an alleged bribery scheme.

“Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of the many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden that were first leveled by Rudy Giuliani and have been reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) wrote in a letter to House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.).

The clash between the panel’s two parties rests on a series of unverified tips.

Under the Trump administration, the FBI and Justice Department were unable to corroborate a tip from a confidential source relaying a conversation heard secondhand that alleged Biden, while vice president, accepted a bribe. Comer has based much of his investigation on this tip, memorized in a FD-1023 form used by the FBI to document such interactions.

Raskin’s letter resurfaces a conversation with Zlochevsky — one arranged through a series of Giuliani associates in which the oligarch speaks of his decision to hire Hunter Biden.

“No one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden's engagement,” Zlochevsky says in the exchange, which appears to be with Vitaly Pruss, whom the letter describes as “another long-time associate of Mr. Giuliani who was a close friend of Mr. Zlochevsky.”

However, the conversation was turned over to Giuliani by Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian who was later convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to former President Trump. 

Zlochevsky also answered “no” when asked if then-Vice President Biden or his staff “assisted you or your company in any way with business deals or meetings with world leaders or any other assistance.”

Raskin argues the information shows that Zlochevsky “squarely rebutted” allegations that are at the core of the GOP probe.

“As part of the impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump, Congress learned that Mr. Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch and the owner of Burisma, whom Republican Committee Members appear to have identified as the source of the allegations memorialized in the Form FD-1023, squarely rebutted these allegations in 2019,” he wrote.

“Despite being interviewed as part of a campaign by Mr. Giuliani and his proxies in 2019 and 2020 to procure damaging information about the Biden family, Mr. Zlochevsky explicitly and unequivocally denied those allegations.”

Raskin, however, also pointed to comments from Trump-era Attorney General Bill Barr that there "are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, there are a lot of cross-currents, and we can’t take anything we receive from the Ukraine at face value.”

Comer has called on the FBI to release the form that lawmakers reviewed in a secure location weeks ago.

“If Ranking Member Raskin thinks there is nothing to the FD-1023 form, then he should join us in calling on the FBI to make it public,” Comer said.

“This unclassified record stands on its own and memorializes a confidential human source’s conversations with a Burisma executive dating back to 2015. The Burisma executive claims then-Vice President Biden solicited and received a $5 million bribe in exchange for certain actions.” 

In the conversation, Zlochevsky also says that they never asked Hunter Biden to make any outreach to the State Department.

“We never approved or asked him to conduct those meetings on behalf of Burisma,” he says.

Still, he makes clear that Hunter Biden’s hiring, as well as that of his former business partner Devon Archer, was part of an effort to help strengthen ties between Burisma and the international community.

“We wanted to [b]uild Burisma as international company. It was very important to have strong board. So when we review resumes of biden and archer they both had great resumes. We also thought it would help in Ukraine to have strong international board figures with great relationships in the United States and Europe,” Zlochevsky says.

“We believe it was worth it. It had it own advantages and disadvantages. But it general we believe our company benefited greatly from this relationship.”

GOP divided on first impeachment target

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Beitsch

The growing zeal among House Republicans to launch impeachment proceedings has hit an early snag: There's no agreement on which Biden administration figure to target.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) this week threw his support behind a possible impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Merrick Garland — just days after the GOP conference sparred internally over a resolution from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach President Biden.

And a possible Biden impeachment came on the heels of an announcement from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) that the panel would kick off the formal investigation of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas needed to proceed with an impeachment inquiry.

Since the GOP takeover of the House, much of the impeachment energy has been focused on Mayorkas, with disagreements over the border fueling several impeachment resolutions in the weeks after lawmakers were sworn in.

But a drop in border crossings in recent months has largely taken the issue out of the national headlines, while at the same time, new accusations surrounding the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation into Hunter Biden have heightened the GOP’s outrage at Garland. It was the latter issue that prompted this week’s surprise statement from McCarthy. 

“If the whistleblowers' allegations are true, this will be a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland's weaponization of DOJ,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter.

In May and June alone, lawmakers introduced 11 different impeachment resolutions for top Biden officials, five of them sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Aside from Biden, Garland and Mayorkas, Greene also has her sights on FBI Director Christopher Wray and Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. 

But until recently, McCarthy in many respects had pumped the brakes on some of the conference’s loudest impeachment cheerleaders.

He’s repeatedly said impeachment can’t be seen as a political endeavor and, as recently as Friday, said that any efforts have “got to reach the constitutional level of impeachment.”

Mayorkas targeted initially 

In a trip to the border late last year, widely expected to be a warning shot that Republicans would kick off an impeachment of Mayorkas, McCarthy instead called for his resignation and signaled any plans to boot the secretary would be part of a lengthy process.

“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate; every order, every action and every failure will determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said last November.

But he’s facing impatience from far-right members of the conference, many with hopes of playing a central role in any impeachment efforts, which would quickly devour the political oxygen in Washington and command the national media spotlight.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) who introduced the first Mayorkas impeachment resolution last year but trailed another such bill this year, said it's not clear when such a measure would move forward or whose name would be on it.

“I introduced mine first — and then I introduced it forth again. … I’ve probably ticked off the leadership too much for them to allow mine to be the one, to be the vehicle. But I still think mine is most comprehensive,” he said.

“I don't know if we'll introduce a new one or just try to amend this one as it moves forward. But I just think that more and more people are starting to come around to the necessity to impeach the guy.”

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), who introduced the first Mayorkas impeachment articles this year, would also like to be involved.

“I was the first one out of the gate, but I don't really care. You know, success has 1,000 fathers,” he said.

“I’d like to lead the effort, but even if I could just be a lieutenant of someone who does if it's not me, I’m perfectly content with that as well. Because we are a team — we're supposed to be, the 222 of us — and I definitely think he needs to be replaced.”

Border issues draw attention to Biden

The Mayorkas bills have been complicated by Boebert’s resolution, which House Republicans voted to refer to the House Homeland Security Committee, as well as House Judiciary, for consideration. 

Green has been steadfastly focused on Mayorkas, earlier this month laying out a five-phase plan for an investigation into the secretary. Those findings would be turned over to leaders of the Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who would then decide how to move forward.

Though Boebert’s resolution, like those focused on Mayorkas, deems impeachment a fitting response for what Republicans see as a mishandling the border, Democrats have dismissed the plan as trying to boot someone from office over a policy disagreement rather than high crimes and misdemeanors.

It also means a shift for the House Homeland Security Committee, which must now wrap Biden into an investigation that had been squarely focused on the effects of specific border policies carried out by Mayorkas's department. 

“We kicked off this five-phase investigation digging into what I believe is Mayorkas’s failures. We just started the ‘dereliction of duty’ phase a week ago. We've had a committee hearing, we've had two subcommittee hearings, we’re doing our transcribed interviews with all the sector chiefs and things like this,” Green told The Hill.

“Now, the House has obviously asked us to add Biden's actions to the stuff that we're looking into. We'll do that for sure.” 

Boebert’s resolution is just one of five pertaining to Biden, and it's not clear how quickly it may advance, if at all.

“I would hope that it would be this year — and very soon,” Boebert told reporters last week. 

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who also has a resolution to impeach Mayorkas, stressed that the founders intentionally set a high bar for its usage.

“I believe they should go through thorough and proper, vigorous debate to assigned committees,” he said. 

“The founders established the highest thresholds for impeachment, and intended it to be almost impossible to impeach a president and very difficult to impeach a secretary.”

Hunter Biden’s case takes over 

The border issues that would serve as the basis for either a Mayorkas or Biden impeachment have taken a back seat recently to news that Hunter Biden agreed to a plea deal in connection with an investigation into his failure to pay taxes.

The crux of the matter for the GOP is a whistleblower complaint to the House Ways and Means Committee, where IRS investigator Gary Shapley claimed the investigation was slow-walked by the office of U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointee assigned to the matter under the former president.

Shapley said Weiss’s office relayed they were told they could not bring charges in D.C., where he believes the strongest case could be had regarding Hunter Biden’s tax evasion. He alleged that Graves, the U.S. attorney for D.C., would not allow Weiss to bring charges in his district.

Weiss, Garland and Graves have all countered Shapley’s testimony.

“I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges,” Weiss told House Judiciary members in a June letter.

Garland went further, saying critiques on the Hunter Biden investigation undermined faith in the department.

“I certainly understand that some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department, and its components, and its employees, by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike. This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy and essential to the safety of the American people. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Garland said Friday.

“You've all heard me say many times that we make our cases based on the facts and the law. These are not just words. These are what we live by.” 

Mike Lillis contributed.