Category: Impeachment

MAGA House: Impeachment or bust

Posted on by Joan McCarter

With just 12 legislative days scheduled the rest of the year, appropriations bills they can’t pass, a simmering civil war over the last continuing resolution to fund the government, and two more funding deadlines looming, House Republicans are laser-focused on one thing: impeaching President Joe Biden.

Leadership wants to make a decision on going forward with impeachment as soon as January, and they’ll figure out what they’re impeaching him over as they go along. At the moment, its allegations are that Biden used his political office to help his family’s business interests. Since their “evidence” tends to have to do with things Biden did when he was not holding political office, and those things are well documented and above board, that’s going to be a challenge.

The MAGA crew doesn’t care. They want this done now. “I think it needs to move with alacrity. I’ve always felt that we should be able to move faster. … But I do anticipate that it comes to Judiciary soon,” North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop, a Freedom Caucus member who sits on the Judiciary Committee, told Politico.

Another Judiciary Committee member, Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia, tried to take the high road talking to Politico, pretending as though this whole pursuit is about public service rather than Trumpian revenge. “We understand that the further you go toward an election, the more politicized these conversations become. That’s why it’s all the more important for us to begin to take action sooner rather than later.”

And if they can’t get Biden on any actual actions, they’re willing to go for the technicalities. “They’ve hinted that they could also draw obstruction allegations into the impeachment articles, citing any refusal by the Biden administration to cooperate,” Politico reports.

That might be one of the strategies behind the ridiculous subpoenas they’re piling up, the latest of which is for Lesley Wolf, the assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware who investigated Hunter Biden. They’re trying to find evidence of political interference in the federal investigation that began in 2018, under the Trump administration. When Joe Biden was not in office.

It’s not like they aren’t aware that this is a fraught issue for a good chunk of the GOP conference. “Any kind of an impeachment puts our Biden people in a really tough spot,” one GOP lawmaker told Politico, talking about the Biden 18 in particular. “Impeachment hurts us politically—it makes our base feel better.”

They know they’re hurting their members. They know they are only antagonizing the Senate, which will never take up impeachment articles even if the House manages to pass them, a very big if at this point. They also know they have an almost insurmountable amount of work to do between now and Jan. 19, when the first tranche of current government funding expires. On top of that, there’s aid to Israel and Ukraine.

The House GOP is flirting with their own political disaster. The impeachers believe they have an ally in new House Speaker Mike Johnson, but Johnson might be savvy enough to recognize that moving forward with impeachment articles will only rend the conference and give him a black eye he can ill afford going into an election year. But Johnson is “all in” for Trump, so no matter how baseless, toxic, and dangerous impeachment is, that’s probably where they’re headed.

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House Republicans issue a subpoena to federal prosecutor in Hunter Biden's case

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We talk about North Carolina non-stop on "The Downballot," so it's only natural that our guest on this week's episode is Anderson Clayton, the new chair of the state Democratic Party. Clayton made headlines when she became the youngest state party chair anywhere in the country at the age of 25, and the story of how she got there is an inspiring one. But what she's doing—and plans to do—is even more compelling. Her focus is on rebuilding the party infrastructure from the county level up, with the aim of reconnecting with rural Black voters who've too often been sidelined and making young voters feel like they have a political home. Plus: her long-term plan to win back the state Supreme Court.

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Here’s how inherently partisan the House impeachment inquiry is

Posted on by Laura Clawson

The early weeks of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s tenure are seeing a predictable outbreak of “moderate” Republicans saying they sure hope that the impeachment inquiry that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched against President Joe Biden will “go where the evidence goes” and rely on “an orderly and fair process.” Those quotes are from Reps. Don Bacon and Doug LaMalfa, respectively, who will provide invaluable cover for Johnson as he works to get the media to buy into his Very Smart Constitutional Lawyer persona. But a Washington Post article on the impeachment dynamics under Johnson contained maybe the most damning possible passage on Johnson’s approach.

But in this week’s private meeting with moderates, Johnson appeared to agree with Republican lawmakers who argued that since Biden’s polling numbers have been so weak, there is less of a political imperative to impeach him, according to Bacon and others who attended the meeting.

I’m sorry, but how is that a passing mention in a story largely focused on how Johnson “has taken a more reserved tone, both publicly and privately, urging members to conduct a thorough and fair investigation with no predetermined outcome”? If Johnson’s “more reserved tone” is based on feeling that it’s no longer politically important to impeach Biden, that’s not a sign that he’s prioritizing being “thorough and fair”; it’s a sign that he’s proceeding from an entirely partisan starting point!

Before he became speaker and decided that his play was looking like a serious guy by getting the media to ignore that his constitutional law work was anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ extremism, Johnson promoted House Oversight Chair James Comer’s baseless allegations against Biden. “The things that the evidence is leading us to, the allegations that are very serious and have been made in the mounting evidence stacking up to show is the causes that are listed right there in the Constitution,” he said in late September. “So we have no choice. Why are Democrats ignoring it purely for partisan political purposes?” Also in late September, he stood on the House floor and railed against the media for correctly observing that the impeachment inquiry “may be weakest in history” and was “the most predictable impeachment investigation in American history.” It goes on. “One thing that remains clear: The list of credible allegations that Joe Biden engaged in bribery schemes continues to grow,” he tweeted in early October. “The Constitution specifically lists bribery as a cause for impeachment. We can't have a President that is bought & paid for by foreign adversaries.”

Sure, Johnson gave lip service to following the evidence from time to time, but he regularly promoted Comer’s wildest allegations against Biden as truth, and presented impeachment as the logical and necessary outcome, the constitutional responsibility of the House for such corruption. And now the reporting shows that if, as speaker, he is backing off a little, it’s not just because he has decided it’s important to look like a statesman but also because he thinks impeachment is currently less important from a partisan standpoint, based on the polling.

This is who Mike Johnson is. The media needs to actually pay attention, rather than reporting such massively damning information as if it were a ho-hum scenario not worthy of extended comment.

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The band is back together, and it is a glorious day as Markos and Kerry’s hot takes over the past year came true—again! Republicans continue to lose at the ballot box and we are here for it!

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Instead of working on keeping government open, Marjorie Taylor Greene tries to impeach head of DHS

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

On Thursday, the Republican-led House decided that after having wasted weeks arguing about who should be their next speaker, they needed to take a nice long weekend. With eight days left to fund our government, the Republican Party still can’t get its act together long enough to pass anything.

Mere days before Veterans Day, while some House members used their time to commemorate U.S. veterans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stood up and spoke for a very long time—and introduced articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

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This is nothing new for Greene, who has authored about a half-dozen articles of impeachment against Biden and others in his administration. On Tuesday, instead of working toward a Republican consensus to keep the government open, Greene passed an amendment to have Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s salary reduced to $1.

Greene is not alone. Targeting Mayorkas has been a way for conservatives to pretend the Biden administration has failed to secure America’s borders. Xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment appear to be the only things resembling policy for Republicans. The logic of how dismantling the U.S. government’s ability to operate will help improve … its operation … remains a mystery.

Did the Republicans vote on anything else?

Yesterday, 106 Republicans voted to eliminate all staff in the Office of the Vice President. Today, 165 Republicans voted to reduce the salary of the White House Press Secretary to $1 pic.twitter.com/o3pttAUr7w

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) November 9, 2023

With a Republican shutdown looming, the GOP seems able to produce only political theater aimed at hampering the government’s ability to serve the American people. This week’s election results suggest the American people have noticed.

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The band is back together, and it is a glorious day as Markos and Kerry’s hot takes over the past year came true—again! Republicans continue to lose at the ballot box and we are here for it!

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Rep. James Comer’s family business is shadier than anything involving Joe Biden

Posted on by Mark Sumner

In the last two weeks, Rep. James Comer has claimed that President Joe Biden “laundered China money,” accused Biden of “influence peddling,” and issued subpoenas to members of Biden’s family. Comer has based these actions on the “discovery” of transactions that Biden made no effort to disguise, including a $200,000 loan Biden extended to his brother and which his brother later repaid.

However, as The Daily Beast reports, Comer was engaged in a series of business dealings with his own brother. Those dealings, which included a $200,000 payment, were nowhere near as straightforward as the dealings between Joe and James Biden. Comer’s deal involved not only a big payment but multiple land swamps, shell companies, and requests for special tax breaks.

As members of the Biden family were being accused of “shady business practices,” it seems that Comer has a forest's worth of shade.

In a press release about the check from Biden’s brother, Comer stated, “Even if this was a personal loan repayment, it’s still troubling that Joe Biden’s ability to be paid back by his brother depended on the success of his family’s shady financial dealings.” By this, Comer seems to mean that Biden was repaid soon after his brother received a payment from an American health care company.

But what happened between Comer and his brother is a lot more mysterious. According to The Daily Beast, Comer’s family has for years been identified in news accounts as owning “Comer Land & Cattle.” As of 2018, Comer listed this as an asset worth $3 million.

However, no such entity appears to exist in business filings. It reportedly did at one time, but there’s been no such business for years. At least, not legally. It’s not registered as a business in Kentucky. It’s not registered anywhere else. A past press release showed him as the owner of “James Comer Jr. Farms,” which also doesn’t appear on paper to be a business entity. Comer’s Facebook page also lists him as the owner of “Comer Family Farms,” which isn’t listed as a business entity in Kentucky, according to the secretary of state’s website.

Much of Comer’s business activity seems to follow inheriting land in Kentucky following his father’s death in 2019. But exactly what happened with that land is the opposite of transparent. In one case, Comer reportedly sold his interest in a piece of land to his brother, then bought it back five months later, slipping his brother $18,000 in the process. That purchase ran through a shell company owned by Comer, the value of which doubled in two years. That company appears to have dealt exclusively with agricultural land deals at a time when Comer was on the House Agriculture Committee.

Comer’s family also swapped large tracts of land in Tennessee. That includes handing his brother one tract valued at $175,000 as a “gift.” In exchange, Comer reportedly got another tract that The Daily Beast describes as “apparently more valuable” without recording the cost of that land. The value of these transactions appears to be larger than even the largest loan that Biden gave to his brother.

Comer also seems to have benefited directly from a “tobacco buyout” of land he purchased while serving on the Kentucky legislature’s Tobacco Settlement Agreement Fund Oversight Committee. This means that he helped set the rate for the purchase of his own property.

Much of Comer’s story seems to be a more rural version of the Donald Trump story. He started out making small land purchases with the help of his father and brother, inherited larger tracts of land when his father died, and has made millions engaging in land speculation. The difference is that for much of this time, Comer was either involved in the Kentucky legislature or the House Agriculture Committee in positions that gave him insider knowledge and a direct advantage.

Comer also has his own Trump-style bank connection. When he sought a line of credit up to $1 million, he found it at South Central Bank—the same bank where Comer had been on the board of directors for 12 years.

If all of this makes Comer look like a country mini-Trump, that’s probably a description that would make him proud. But it would also seem to make his family finances much more worthy of scrutiny than anything he’s claimed about Joe Biden.

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The band is back together, and it is a glorious day as Markos and Kerry’s hot takes over the past year came true—again! Republicans continue to lose at the ballot box and we are here for it!

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Gaetz does not think highly of Republican effort to impeach Biden

Posted on by Laura Clawson

It’s emerging that Rep. Matt Gaetz really does not think highly of House Republicans’ drive to impeach President Joe Biden. This seems like the kind of thing Gaetz would be very excited about, but—like many observers—he can see that his fellow Republicans are not doing a very good job of it. That came out during the floor fight to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Gaetz rebuffed House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan’s defense of McCarthy’s leadership by saying, “It's hard to make the argument that oversight is the reason to continue when it sort of looks like failure theater.” As it turns out, Gaetz had aired similar complaints days earlier at an online fundraiser with Rep. Matt Rosendale and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

“I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden,” Gaetz said in the Bannon-moderated discussion. “They’re trying to engage in a, like, ‘forever war’ of impeachment,” he added. “And like many of our forever wars, it will drag on forever and end in a bloody draw.”

That’s not all. Gaetz also said, “I just don’t get the sense that it’s for the sake of impeachment. I think it’s for the sake of having another bad thing to say about Joe Biden.”

At the fundraiser, Gaetz claimed he wasn’t criticizing Jordan or House Oversight Chair James Comer, and when NBC News asked him about his comments at the fundraiser, he responded, “Kevin wasn’t serious. Jim Jordan is.” Apparently, the whole “failure theater” thing was not an accusation against the people conducting the failure theater; it was somehow McCarthy’s fault. That’s very convenient for Gaetz as he tries to move forward while many of his fellow Republicans are furious at him. He says Jordan is serious, but he obviously doesn’t think much of the overall effort—so how is he going to reframe his view of it going forward?

Now, this is Matt Gaetz. It’s not that he doesn’t want to attack the Bidens. His favored way that Jordan and Comer could show they were serious and not just engaged in “failure theater” would be to subpoena Hunter Biden, something he brought up both at the fundraiser and on the House floor. How would bringing Hunter Biden in to deny that his father had been involved in his business dealings move things along when several witnesses have testified that the president was not involved in his son’s business? It’s unclear. It kind of sounds like Gaetz just wants to torment the younger Biden in person.

If Gaetz thought Republicans had anything, he’d doubtless be sprinting in front of the cameras to loudly call for an impeachment vote. But right now, he’s not seeing it. He can talk all he wants about how McCarthy wasn’t serious and Jordan is, but Jordan and Comer have been leading the investigations that look like an illegitimate impeachment, failure theater, a forever war of impeachment. And he’s absolutely right in every one of those descriptions.

Sign the petition: No to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

Rep. Crockett says House GOP ‘pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser’

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas stepped into the spotlight during the Republican sham-impeachment inquiry on Thursday. She began by modestly reminding everyone that the so-called “evidence” the Republicans keep pointing to is not evidence at all, and never has been. “Repeating the same lies will not somehow turn them into truths,” she said. Then Crockett turned up the heat: “Kind of like the election that Trump lost. Say it with me: He lost it. Repeating the same lie that he won wasn't going to turn the election around.” Hot enough? How about this: “The ‘lost’ in this chamber keep pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser.”

That’s minute one. Crockett proceeded to drop microphones all over the inquiry chamber as she spent the rest of her time hammering home every fact out there about Donald Trump, his dirty dealings, and the charges against him while continuously throwing well-deserved shade at Republicans. Crockett joked that if Republicans “continue to say ‘if’ or ‘Hunter,’ and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now.”

One of the highlights was when Crockett held up a picture of the boxes of classified documents discovered by the FBI in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathroom, saying that when Democratic officials “start talking about things that look like evidence, [Republicans] want to act like they blind.” She then turned the gas all the way up, motioning to the image she was holding up: “They don't know what this is. These are our national secrets. Looks like—in the shitter to me.”

And she didn’t stop there.

Enjoy.

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Crockett: Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Before I begin my questioning, I want to remind everyone that the information recorded in the FBI Form 1023 that my Republican colleagues keep citing is not evidence of anything. This form reflects the years-old secondhand unverified information from a Ukrainian oligarch as relayed to the FBI by a confidential human source. These unverified second-hand allegations have been repeatedly debunked and undermined, including by the confidential human source who relayed this information to the FBI.

The tip, recorded in the Form 1023, was thoroughly explored by the U.S. attorney handpicked by Donald Trump, which was Attorney General William Barr and the assessment was closed. Finally, Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner who worked with the Ukrainian oligarch in question, told this committee in a transcribed interview in July that he had no knowledge of any such payments allegedly described in this form.

Repeating the same lies will not somehow turn them into truths. Kind of like the election that Trump lost: Say it with me. He lost it. Repeating the same lie that he won wasn't going to turn the election around. The “lost” in this chamber keep pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser. So if we gon’ talk about China, let's go ahead and talk about China.

And let's talk about the dealings. And let me point out the fact that right now each of you has admitted that none of you are fact witnesses. We walked in without facts. And unfortunately, because what we say isn't necessarily evidence, we have wasted the American people's time and we are going to walk out of this chamber, and we still have no facts that are leading to anything.

But let me give y’all a little bit of tea while we're here. So: I have a document that I will ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record. It’s a fact sheet on President Trump's shady business dealings with the Chinese government.

Comer: What are you entering in? A record from who?

Crockett: This is from the Congressional Integrity.

Comer: Congressional Integrity Project, the dark-money PAC. I object. Object to that too.

Crockett: Of course y’all are going to object, but we gon’ talk about it. So it says Trump has extensive financial ties to the Chinese government. President Trump collected millions from Chinese government-owned entities while in office: ‘“I have the best tenants in the world.”President Trump was well aware of the multiple million-dollar lease to Chinese interests. President Trump promised to donate foreign government profits while in office, but he donated less than a third of his proceeds from the Chinese government.

President Trump maintained three foreign bank accounts while in office, including one in China. President Trump's business with China raises legal and ethical concerns. President Trump: “President Xi loves the people of China. He loves his country, and he's doing a very good job.”

Let me tell you something: I don't want to talk about what y’all want to act like is some big mystery because we keep sitting here. And Professor Gerhardt, just just to be clear: As my colleagues have even tried to provide evidence, which they're not the ones to provide evidence. Have you ever heard them say if since we've been sitting here for I don't know how long?

Gerhardt: Yes, I. I've been taking a tally.

Crockett: Oh, okay. Can you show us what the tally is?

Gerhardt: More than 35 times the Republican witnesses and Republican members of the committee have used the word ‘if.’

Crockett: Thank you so much for that. Because honestly, if they would continue to say “if” or “Hunter,” and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now. Because I promise you, they have not talked about the subject of this, which would be the president. But let me tell you something that was so disturbing as I walked into this chamber today. As I prepared, I said, “What is the crime?”

Because when you're talking about impeachment, you're talking about high crimes or misdemeanors. And I can't seem to find the crime. And honestly, no one has testified of what crime they believe the president of the United States has committed. But when we start talking about things that look like evidence, they want to act like they blind. They don't know what this is.

These are our national secrets. Looks like in the shitter to me. This looks like more evidence of our national secrets—say on a stage at Mar-a-Lago. When we're talking about somebody that’s committed high crimes, it’s at least indictments.  Let's say 32 counts related to unauthorized retention of national security secrets. Seven counts related to obstructing the investigation. Three false statements. One count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.Falsifying business records.Conspiracy to defraud the United States.Two counts related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings. One count of conspiracy to violate civil rights.Twenty-three counts related to forgery or false document statements.Eight counts related to soliciting. And I could go on because he's got 91 counts pending right now.

But I will tell you what the president has been guilty of: He has, unfortunately, been guilty of loving his child unconditionally. And that is the only evidence that they have brought forward. And honestly, I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as he loves his child. Until they find some evidence, we need to get back to the people's work, which means keeping this government open so that people don't go hungry in the streets of the United States.

And I will yield.

I could listen to this all day long.

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.