Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said an effort to impeach President Biden that lacks due process would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
Graham said during a Friday appearance on “The Hill” on NewsNation that Republicans argued that Democrats did not give former President Trump the right to due process during the impeachment proceedings against him in 2019 and 2021, and he does not believe anyone should be impeached without a hearing being held.
Graham noted that the impeachment against former President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s went through a process that allowed him to defend himself.
“But what’s being done in the House to go straight to the floor with articles of impeachment — we criticized the Democrats for not giving Trump any due process. I think this is dead on arrival,” he said.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) introduced a privileged motion in the House this week to force a vote on impeaching Biden over his handling of federal immigration policy and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. But the motion caught many of her own colleagues by surprise and did not have support from several notable GOP members in the House and Senate, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Senate Republicans raised questions about the effort, and some said they considered it to be frivolous and not meeting the level required for impeachment. The motion was ultimately referred to the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, avoiding the vote for now.
McCarthy said Boebert’s motion is “one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress” and an investigative process needs to occur first to move forward.
“Throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we’re doing right now,” he said.
Republicans have been pushing to impeach various members of the Biden administration, including Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has introduced articles against all of them as well as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves.
Some Republicans warned after Boebert's effort failed that the attempt will give Democrats the ability to paint the GOP as extreme, with one Republican strategist calling Boebert’s effort “frankly stupid.”
Graham said impeaching any president without “some process in place” is “irresponsible.”
“It’s important that we follow the process, and if you believe that President Biden has done something this impeachable, take it through the committee, give him a chance to respond, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
The last few days have been what Republicans consider busy. Have they solved any issues related to American workers, public safety, or national security? No. They’ve introduced an impeachment resolution against President Joe Biden and voted to censure Rep. Adam Schiff for pursuing the mountain of evidence against the Donald Trump campaign’s many connections to foreign interests and intelligence.
On Friday during the floor debate over Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Biden impeachment resolution, Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern gave it to the Republican Party for about six and a half minutes, calling the current Republican political vengeance efforts unserious. “[Republicans] dishonored this House and dishonored themselves by bringing to the floor a ridiculous censure resolution against Adam Schiff because Donald Trump told them to,” McGovern said. “And today they're dishonoring this House and dishonoring themselves by bringing to the floor a ridiculous impeachment referral resolution against Joe Biden because Donald Trump told them to.”
And then McGovern gave a true distillation of how useless this Republican Party is.
“This body has become a place where extreme, outlandish and nutty issues get debated passionately and important ones, not at all” McGovern said, summarizing what the Republican-lead House means these days. To highlight this disconnection between reality and MAGA fiction, McGovern contrasted real work versus MAGA work:
They talk about law and order when their frontrunner, frontrunner for president, has been indicted on federal charges. They talk about respecting law enforcement. Then they come in here and downplay the rioters who came in here on January 6th and beat up cops with fire extinguishers. I don't even know how they look the Capitol police officers in the eye when they walk in this place.
They talk about how important it is that we follow a good process, yet the Rules Committee was called in late last night, literally at a moment's notice where they deployed emergency procedures so we could refer this measure to a committee. What a spectacular emergency. Truly something that needed to be done immediately. We all know the truth. The real emergency here was that the Georgia wing and the Colorado wing of the MAGA caucus got into a fight right over right over there on the House floor about who gets to impeach the president first.
McGovern added, “They can try to impeach Joe Biden all they want, but all they are doing is impeaching themselves and making a mockery of this place while they're at it.” He went on to call Trump a “cult leader” who would go down as the worst president in U.S. history.
McGovern spent a good amount of time talking about all of the things that should be happening on the House floor and what the Republican Party is choosing to do instead, concluding:
“It is grotesque. It is embarrassing and it is shameful. We aren't we aren't debating matters that help or uplift people. Rather, we're debating garbage to make Trump happy. It's cowardly and it's sickening. What we have here is a joke. Just like the Republican majority, which is clearly going to be a temporary majority. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.”
Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel, the first member of Congress to appear on the show! Nickel gives us the blow-by-blow of his unlikely victory that saw him flip an extremely competitive seat from red to blue last year, including how he adjusted when a new map gave him a very different district and why highlighting the extremism of his MAGA-flavored opponent was key to his success. A true election nerd, Nickel tells us which precincts he was tracking on election night that let him know he was going to win—and which fellow House freshman is the one you want to rock out with at a concert.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is throwing his weight behind the conservative effort to expunge the two impeachments of former President Trump, saying Trump’s behavior didn't rise to a level that merited either punishment, and he would like to eradicate both votes from history.
Leaving the Capitol on Friday ahead of a long holiday recess, the Speaker said he supports erasing the pair of impeachments because, he argued, one “was not based on true facts” and the other was “on the basis of no due process.”
“I think it is appropriate, just as I thought before, that you should expunge it because it never should have gone through,” McCarthy told reporters outside his office. He later clarified he supports expunging both Trump impeachments, but he emphasized such resolutions must first go through the committee process.
The Speaker’s endorsement of the expungement push highlights both the tenuous grip McCarthy has on his conference, where conservatives are holding his feet to the fire on numerous policy issues, and the powerful influence Trump retains over the Republican Party more than two years after leaving office.
Behind then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Democrats successfully impeached Trump twice: The first vote, in late 2019, found that Trump abused his power when he threatened to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless leaders in Kyiv launched an investigation of his political rivals. The second, in early 2021, found Trump responsible for “incitement of insurrection” for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In the House, the first impeachment passed without any Republican support. The second was different, and 10 Republicans crossed the aisle to impeach Trump for the Capitol rampage. In both cases, Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate rallied to prevent a conviction.
Just two of the 10 Republicans who supported the second impeachment still serve in the House: Reps. Dan Newhouse (Wash.) and David Valadao (Calif.).
McCarthy's position on the Jan. 6 attack has shifted over time.
Immediately following the Capitol rampage, McCarthy went to the floor and said Trump bore "responsibility" for the violence, which was carried out by Trump supporters trying to block the certification of his 2020 election defeat.
When it became clear the GOP was sticking behind Trump, McCarthy quickly reversed course, visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida a few weeks later. He would go on to say Trump did not "provoke" the riot, and he then orchestrated the expulsion of then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from GOP leadership for her refusal to indulge Trump's lies about his election defeat.
Asked about potentially expunging the punishments in January, the newly-elected Speaker said he would “look at it.”
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) launched an effort to expunge Trump’s impeachments on Thursday, unveiling two resolutions that would discard the disciplines. Greene is the sponsor of the measure targeting Trump’s first impeachment, and Stefanik’s name is on the second one.
The practical implications of the resolutions are dubious because they can do nothing to revisit the impeachment votes or eradicate the public’s memory of them. Still, the bills are designed to do both, claiming the expungement will reset the historical record "as if such Articles had never passed."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a press conference held by the Republican Study Committee announcing their Fiscal Year 2024 Budget at the Capitol on Wednesday, June 14, 2023.
Earlier this week, before the measures were introduced, Greene said she is hoping to see a vote on the floor for the resolutions “soon.”
The push to expunge Trump’s impeachment is not new on Capitol Hill: In the last Congress, then-Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla), who now serves in the Senate, introduced resolutions to expunge both of the former president’s impeachments. They did not, however, advance in the Democratic-controlled House.
Democrats wasted no time this week attacking the Republicans supporting expungement, accusing them of carrying water for a twice-disgraced former president solely because he remains so powerful among GOP voters.
“It’s a continuation of Republicans acting as Donald Trump's taxpayer-funded lawyers,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was a lead attorney for the Democrats during the first impeachment.
“It's telling who's introducing them," he added. "And it's essentially whoever's trying to curry the most favor with Trump.”
House Republicans aren’t getting anything done to benefit the nation or the voters, but they are achieving at a high level in at least one area: sheer disarray. Actually, make that two areas: sheer disarray and intense spitefulness.
The big talk among Republicans these days is impeaching President Joe Biden, with a split between people who want to impeach now without even pretending to have investigated and assembled impeachment-worthy evidence against him, and people who want to do it after a series of show trials designed to insert uncorroborated allegations into the public consciousness. Then there are the so-called “moderates,” who will whine to the press about the awful position they’re being put in—then fall in line when it’s time to vote on whatever the extremists have gotten Speaker Kevin McCarthy to back.
All of these groups are sharing their feelings with the press. The biggest splash this week was made by reports that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called her former ally Rep. Lauren Boebert a “bitch” as the two joust over whose impeachment resolution will get the most attention and fundraising leverage. But it’s just one moment of hostility in a party with a lot of them.
Greene says Boebert “copied my impeachment articles and probably did it, it seems to me, because there’s a fundraising deadline coming up at the end of the month,” and that she will be forcing a vote on her own impeachment resolution soon. When she does, have no doubt that she will fundraise off of it—in fact, Boebert sucking up Greene’s planned fundraising juice is no small part of the fury here.
Greene, though, is at risk of being purged from the far-right House Freedom Caucus over her closeness to McCarthy, which is seen as compromising her far-right purity. For her part, Greene says she’s just being “more realistic” in her tactics.
Greene’s “more realistic” tactics will still put Biden-district Republicans on the spot, though, and they’re unhappy about how often that’s happened recently.
“I am concerned,” about having to vote on impeaching Biden, Rep. Tony Gonzales told CNN. “One witch hunt for another witch hunt makes this place all about witch hunts. Meanwhile, the American public are focused putting food on the table, keeping their kids safe in schools, keeping inflation down. Real issues.” That’s nice talk, but since Gonzales participated in party-line votes on referring Boebert’s impeachment resolution to two committees and on censuring Rep. Adam Schiff, it has to be filed as just talk until he actually votes against a Republican witch hunt.
And Gonzales is going to face that again and again. Whether it’s Greene and Boebert with their separate efforts to force an impeachment vote, or committee chairs like Jim Jordan and James Comer taking a little longer to put a fig leaf of fraudulent “investigation” and “evidence” on their eventual impeachment efforts, House Republicans are not letting this go. Given their failure to show how they would productively govern the United States by passing meaningful legislation—even if it died in the Senate—attacks on the president, the president’s son, and top administration officials are all they have to convince their base they’ve done something with two years in control of the House.
Extremism is a powerful drug. And these people are so awful that infighting was probably inevitable the moment Republicans had power. It's a virtuous (from Democrats’ point of view) circle: Republican disarray begets failure begets more disarray.
So-called moderates like Gonzales are reportedly trying to get McCarthy to stop giving in to the Freedom Caucus, but giving in to extremists is what McCarthy does—especially since the deal he struck to become speaker on the 15th vote gave any single member the ability to call for a vote to replace him. McCarthy is spending as much time trying to save his own hide as he is trying to lead his party. Not that McCarthy’s party is leadable, even under someone far more adept than he is.
Take Rep. Matt Gaetz, sounding like the id of the Republican Party. Using privileged resolutions to force votes on things like impeachment, as Boebert did, is “actually going to be a new doctrine for us,” he told CNN.
“I sort of have had enough struggle sessions,” he said. “I’m ready for action, action, action.”
If that action involves Greene and Boebert trading insults, Greene at risk of being kicked out of the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy being eternally under pressure, and every Republican who represents a district that voted for Biden having to take unpopular vote after unpopular vote, I’m here for it.
This week on “The Brief,” we are joined by Christina Reynolds of Emily’s List. Reynolds is the Senior Vice President of Communications and Content at the progressive organization, which works to get women elected to office. On the anniversary of the outrageous Supreme Court decision to take away the reproductive protections of Roe v. Wade, Reynolds talks about what she is seeing up and down the ballot this election cycle.
This may come as a surprise, but it’s glaringly apparent that Republican leadership does not have the stomach to pursue the impeachment of President Joe Biden.
MAGA Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) leveraged a procedural tool earlier this week to force a vote on an impeachment resolution. The resolution alleges Biden violated his oath by failing to enforce immigration laws and secure the southern border.
In a strictly party-line vote, 219-208, the House voted Thursday to send the matter to a pair of congressional committees – the House Homeland Security and Judiciary – for possible consideration.
Sounds good, right?
Except, as the Associated Press points out, those committees “are under no obligation to do anything.”
They describe the effort as having “pushed off” the impeachment resolution, while Reuters reports that the House has “sidelined” the measure.
Shrinking Violets: Republicans Retreating From Biden Impeachment
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has been trying to tamp down impeachment efforts from firebrand GOP lawmakers Boebert and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Greene (R-GA) has announced plans for similar impeachment initiatives against Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, the attorney prosecuting January 6 participants.
McCarthy, meanwhile, urged Republicans to oppose Boebert’s resolution, saying, “I don’t think it’s the right thing to do” and citing a need for investigation and following the traditional process.
Rep Boebert explains that Republican leadership is not supporting her resolution to impeach Joe Biden right now.
— Grace Chong “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.” (@gc22gc) June 21, 2023
McCarthy is being true to form, so long as you listen very carefully to what he says. Just a couple of weeks before the midterm elections he wasn’t a fan of impeaching President Biden.
“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.”
Perhaps he doesn’t recall that Democrats didn’t give a rip about whether or not former President Donald Trump “rose to the occasion of impeachment,” going after him twice for requesting an investigation of corruption in Ukraine and for telling people to protest peacefully at the Capitol.
Considering recent news, Trump’s ask for an investigation was perfectly legitimate.
Perhaps Greene should have been directing her recent remarks about Boebert to the Speaker instead.
NEW in @PunchbowlNews AM — MCCARTHY on investigations if House Rs take the majority.
TOP LINE: @GOPLeader is quite bearish on impeachment.
A new Axios report indicates Senate Republicans are also a bit squeamish about pursuing President Biden’s impeachment. Several top GOP senators – members of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team – are quoted as being in opposition.
Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) – “I don’t know what they’re basing the president’s impeachment on … I can’t imagine going down that road.”
John Thune (R-SD) – “I’d rather focus on the policy agenda, the vision for the future, and go on and win elections.”
Steve Daines (R-MT) – Hasn’t “seen evidence that would rise to an impeachable offense.”
Senator Daines – You haven’t seen any evidence?! Perhaps a visit to the optometrist is in order.
The border crisis, Afghanistan withdrawal, the criminal pursuit of political opponents, colluding with school boards to treat parents like terrorists, corruption and bribery, an obvious lack of mental acuity? Do any of these things ring a bell?
Every single Democrat on the House Ways & Means Committee voted this morning to hide the IRS whistleblower testimony and keep it secret.
Now we know why: it is devastating proof that the Biden family is a criminal organization and DOJ is a corrupt Democrat protection racket. pic.twitter.com/pzniJCIFak
What is the point of the Republican party right now? Can anybody explain what they’re doing?
Perhaps these Republican squishes should listen to the words of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) who pointed out that it was the Democrats who opened Pandora’s Box when it comes to impeachment.
“Whether it’s justified or not, the Democrats weaponized impeachment. They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him,” Cruz said.
It’s time the GOP exercised its own power. Their colleagues on the other side of the aisle didn’t hesitate to take down Trump’s presidency. They won’t hesitate to do the same if a Republican wins the White House in 2024.
Grow a spine.
Now is the time to support and share the sources you trust.
The Political Insider ranks #3 on Feedspot’s “100 Best Political Blogs and Websites.”
A quixotic push by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach President Biden was placed on the back burner Thursday. But even some Republican insiders fear the damage might already have been done.
Boebert, one of the fiercest among the GOP’s right-wing firebrands, surprised many of her colleagues by introducing an impeachment resolution earlier this week. The move caused disarray in the House Republican conference, and the furor was only defused with a deal to send the resolution for consideration by committees.
The move, passed in a 219-208 vote Thursday, places no obligation on the committees to do anything to advance Boebert’s proposal. But she is insistent that, if it becomes clear the gambit is solely about delay, she will bring up her resolution “every day for the rest of my time here in Congress.”
Meanwhile, more moderate Republicans are wincing at what they consider an unforced political error that will give Democrats ammunition to attack the GOP as extreme and out of touch.
Republican strategist Dan Judy described the move as “frankly stupid,” adding, “the party needs to be focused on the problems facing Americans rather than this sideshow.”
Most polls, to be sure, show American voters' main concerns are the economy and inflation, as well as a host of other matters barely related to the effort to impeach the president.
But that doesn’t mean there will be an end to impeachment efforts, given that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) has her own efforts to impeach not only Biden, but Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Matthew Graves, the U.S. district attorney for the District of Columbia.
Adding to this week’s spectacle, Boebert and Greene got into a heated verbal exchange on the House floor Wednesday. Several observers contended Greene called Boebert a “little bitch.” Greene also reportedly accused Boebert of copying her on impeachment.
Boebert, for her part, has shot back that she doesn’t want to get involved in “middle school” antics.
Democrats are agog at disputes like that one — but also convinced that the politics of the matter will play to their advantage.
Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh declared himself amazed at “the degree to which the Republicans will figure out a way to self-destruct.”
He argued the specific danger was that performative efforts such as a push to impeach Biden would turn off independent and moderate voters.
While he acknowledged such voters have become fewer as the United States has become more polarized, he contended that they "still are a decisive part of winning any general election. And it’s very, very clear that those moderate, swing voters are just not interested in all these Republican shenanigans.”
Some Republicans shoot back that Democrats twice impeached then-President Trump — and they note that, separate from those moves, some Democratic members made solo runs aimed at the same goal.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) tried at least three times to impeach Trump, for example. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) introduced five articles of impeachment against Trump in November 2017, before the 45th president had even rung up a full year in office.
But Democrats note that such measures died swiftly, and further contend that the MAGA wing of the GOP has a firmer grip on today’s Republican Party than the progressive left has on congressional Democrats.
They point not only to Boebert’s impeachment effort but to the mini-uprising that stalled normal business in the House recently, after hard-right members including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) balked at issues including the compromises Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had made on spending in order to win a debt ceiling deal with Biden.
There is still the possibility that ultraconservative unhappiness over those compromises could result in a government shutdown closer to the end of the year.
“It’s not just the impeachment, but this whole pattern of things,” said Democratic strategist Robert Shrum.
He included allegations of “Deep State” malfeasance, as well as attacks even on some judges and investigators appointed by former Trump, as evidence of this pattern.
Shrum added that any government shutdown would be “catastrophic for the Republican Party.”
Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), speaking in the House on Thursday, accused Republicans involved in bringing the impeachment resolution to the floor of “dishonoring this House and dishonoring themselves.”
According to The Associated Press, McGovern added that the House had "become a place where extreme, outlandish and nutty issues get debated passionately, and important ones not at all.”
Even some Republicans who are uneasy with Boebert’s actions argue that the political impact should not be exaggerated. They contend the episode might fade from voters’ minds fast enough.
But it’s notable that the effort was seen as causing severe discomfort for the 18 House Republicans who represent districts won by Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
And Boebert’s push also gives more fuel to the president’s argument about the supposed extremism of “ultra-MAGA Republicans” — a label that was effective during last year’s midterms.
Still, there seems no chance of Boebert backing down.
“Last Congress, I watched my impeachment articles collect dust in Pelosi’s office,” she tweeted Thursday afternoon. “This Congress, action had to be taken!”
The ability of single lawmaker, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., to push forward the impeachment resolution caught Republicans off guard by the unscripted move this week. Many viewed it as a political distraction from other priorities.
The attempted impeachment of President Joe Biden is now a thing House Republicans will have to spend actual time on, thanks to Colorado wingnut Rep. Lauren Boebert. Whatever procedural moves leadership takes now to get the issue off the floor won’t matter because the Freedom Caucus and other hardliners have decided this is how they will hijack the House. That’s a big headache for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, one that the would-be moderates could exploit to the benefit of the country, if only they could be bothered.
Those so-called moderates are talking big about their few “accomplishments” thus far. For instance, last week they voted against some amendments to legislation intended to make it harder for the federal government to regulate stuff. It’s a dangerous and ridiculous bill that every single Republican voted for, but these guys are crowing to Politico about how they voted against Freedom Caucus amendments to it. “We were sending a signal,” one of them said, calling it their strategy to hold the MAGA wing “accountable” but not hurt leadership.
The lawmaker, who insisted on anonymity to discuss how tough they were, bragged about how they told Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia congressman who thinks the Republican-appointed FBI director should be impeached over the Trump classified documents case: “You want Good bills passed, [then] put another name on it.” So, so anonymously brave. They’re admitting that they don’t have a problem with the content of any Freedom Caucus bill, just the sponsor, with one exception: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said his votes against the amendments were policy-based. As for the rest of them? Their claims of moderation are about as valid as their claim on family values or being pro-life.
They disproved that again Wednesday when nearly all of them voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for his role in Intelligence Committee investigations and the impeachments of Donald Trump. This group voted against the first censure vote last week because it came with a ridiculous $16 million fine. Once that was dropped, they were happy to pile on in this proxy vote for Trump. Because that’s what this is. They’re all still mad about both Trump impeachments, the Jan. 6 investigations conducted by House Democrats, and the ongoing investigations surrounding Trump. Schiff is their scapegoat.
There’s a lot these not-Freedom Caucus Republicans could do to force McCarthy to throw over the extremists. There’s a hell of a lot more of them. If they acted as a bloc, they could take over the House the same way 11 assholes did a few weeks ago, when they shut the House down with a procedural vote. Will they muster the courage?
Probably not, Main Street Caucus Chair Dusty Johnson of South Dakota says. “I’ve heard people talk about that tactic, you know, out of frustration,” he told Politico, but suggested it’s not likely. He said that, in his group, “people understand that the best way—the most productive way—to move forward is try to stick together.” In other words, seeking safety in numbers, cowering in fear while their feral colleagues take all of them down in a spiral of nonsense.
House Republican leadership isn’t happy with Rep. Lauren Boebert’s current impeachment shenanigans, but that’s not because they don’t plan to impeach Biden. They just don’t like the timing and the specifics. Speaker Kevin McCarthy knows that his members and the Republican base will demand a baseless impeachment while the party has a House majority, but he wants to at least pretend it’s not a foregone conclusion, and that Republicans only went where the evidence lead after sober consideration. (Ha ha ha.)
McCarthy’s line, offered to reporters on Wednesday, is: “What I am saying is these investigations will follow the information we get wherever it will take us.” He also repeated uncorroborated accusations against the president, though, in case you were tempted to believe that the fix wasn’t in.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who is leading a series of “investigations” into the president and his son Hunter, is similarly pretending that impeachment is a giant question mark.
“We’ve never said impeachment, yes or no,” Comer told Punchbowl. “If it leads to impeachment, it leads to impeachment. Our investigation, we’ve still got several more months of work to do before I can issue a report … I don’t think what happens tomorrow [on the Boebert resolution] will have any impact. Nor will the plea-bargain deal with the president’s son.”
House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry insists, “The goal is not impeachment.” The real goal, he said, was information. “But if the information leads you to facts that require and demand accountability, that’s the only accountability.” And “yes,” Perry believes Republicans will uncover said “information” against Biden and support for impeachment will build.
Other Republicans are being even less circumspect.
“Ultimately, you’re going to see Biden impeached,” Rep. Andy Ogles told Punchbowl. “The question is when and is it soon enough for the American people?” Ogles, like Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has introduced an impeachment resolution. Rep. Eli Crane said impeachment will “absolutely” be an outcome of the investigations.
The likelihood that McCarthy will be able to stifle the demands for Biden’s impeachment is only slightly higher than the likelihood that McCarthy will be remembered as an effective speaker. Under his leadership, House Republicans have few legislative accomplishments to tout, and the promised bombshell hearings on Hunter Biden and anything else they could dig up to undermine the president have flopped. Impeachment is what Republicans have left to pander to their base, mollify the people whose support McCarthy lobbied and traded for through 15 speaker votes, and pretend they have gotten something done.
But an impeachment could very well backfire on Republicans. They’ll be going into it, after all, with scant evidence and screamingly obvious partisan motivations. And unless they conduct impeachment hearings with a much higher level of professionalism than they’ve shown to this point, it’s going to be a clown show that reveals again and again that this is about revenge against Democrats for impeaching Donald Trump and about undermining the Biden presidency after Republicans failed to overturn the 2020 elections. Comer says his report won’t come out for “several more months,” which would likely put any impeachment proceedings into 2024. It might motivate their base, but it’s unlikely to be what independent voters want to see from the House of Representatives.
”How can you impeach someone with no evidence?” asked Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Raskin is pretty smart, so I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question. He knows Republicans don’t care about evidence, and if they move forward on impeachment, even voters who aren’t paying very much attention will realize that.
Joining us on "The Downballot" this week is North Carolina Rep. Wiley Nickel, the first member of Congress to appear on the show! Nickel gives us the blow-by-blow of his unlikely victory that saw him flip an extremely competitive seat from red to blue last year, including how he adjusted when a new map gave him a very different district and why highlighting the extremism of his MAGA-flavored opponent was key to his success. A true election nerd, Nickel tells us which precincts he was tracking on election night that let him know he was going to win—and which fellow House freshman is the one you want to rock out with at a concert.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was not a happy camper in the Republican conference meeting Wednesday morning, thanks to the latest antics of Rep. Lauren Boebert, Colorado’s contribution to the debasement of Congress. On Tuesday evening, Boeber introduced a privileged resolution to impeach President Joe Biden on the made-up charge that he violated his oath by not stopping illegal immigration. The charge isn’t important, it’s the mechanism that’s got McCarthy’s knickers twisted.
Under House rules, privileged resolutions bypass the regular process—and leadership’s ability to determine what goes to the floor—and have to be voted on within two legislative days. There are only two legislative days left this week before Congress heads out to celebrate July 4 for the next 19 days. So this eats up time and energy that the House can’t really afford, not that they were going to accomplish much of anything in these two days. It also exposes the whole Republican conference as a clown car, and McCarthy’s weak leadership for what it is.
Democrats said they would move to table the motion, which puts McCarthy in the position, again, of having to rely on Democrats for help, which only serves to piss off the Freedom Caucus maniacs and their allies more, which will lead to exactly what is happening now: escalation.
.@RepMTG says she will speak to McCarthy later today on her push to impeach Biden, others. She says she addressed the conference about impeachment telling them it’s “the right thing to do.” She plans to convert all her articles to privileged resolutions.
Greene has a raft of impeachment resolutions, and if she makes them all privileged, there’s another two weeks of work eaten up. She’s mad that Boebert upstaged her on this one, calling Boebert a “copycat.”
At the same time, Rep. Adam Schiff’s stalker colleague, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Freedom Caucuser, is pushing a second privileged resolution to censure him. Luna has sponsored six resolutions so far this year. Five of them are about Schiff. The first privileged one failed last week when 20 Republicans joined with Democrats to table it.
Which leads to the question of just how orchestrated all this is. It doesn’t seem likely, but the Freedom Caucus might just be organized enough to be planning this in another effort to gum up the works in the House and just to harass McCarthy.
The week before last, 11 of them shut the House down by blocking a rule vote—the first time that had happened in 21 years—and refusing to agree to let it pass until McCarthy sufficiently appeased them by agreeing to renege on the debt ceiling deal he had negotiated with Biden. It’s hard to credit those people with enough organizational skills or procedural knowledge to look at what Boebert and Luna are doing as strategy, but stranger things have happened.
All of which McCarthy brought upon himself. For one thing, he’s amplified and encouraged the border hysteria. That’s despite a substantial decline in actual illegal border crossings in recent weeks. He greenlit bogus investigations of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to determine whether he should be impeached. There are at least four impeachment resolutions out there against Mayorkas, one of them from Greene. This latest from her and Boebert will likely encourage all these yahoos to make their resolutions privileged too.
Which is what got McCarthy worked up. “There was a discussion about regular order in January,” he reportedly said in Wednesday morning’s conference meeting. “And going through committee—but now we have members doing privileged motions without going through committee or even speaking with the conference.”
“What majority do we want to be?” he said. “Give it right back in 2 years or hold it for a decade and make real change. How are we going to censure Adam Schiff for abusing his position to lie and force an impeachment and then turn around and do it ourselves the next day?”
Welcome to the bed you made, Kev. Enjoy the fact that you’re going to have to rely on the Democrats to bail you out again.
CALL: 202-225-3121 or 
(@gc22gc)