Category: Impeachment

Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a mess of House GOP’s big impeachment day

Posted on by Joan McCarter

The ill-fated impeachment trial of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was finally supposed to take center stage for House Republicans this week after Speaker Mike Johnson pulled it last week. The House impeachment managers presented the articles to the Senate Tuesday afternoon, in what’s supposed to be a solemn and grave proceeding—impeachment is as serious as it gets in Congress. 

Mayorkas’ impeachment is supposed to demonstrate the House GOP’s resolve on immigration and border policy and prove that it can actually get something done, but the antics of extremist Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie have completely overshadowed it. House Republicans brought the impeachment to the Senate, and no one gave a damn.

Instead, the blockbuster news of the day is Massie joining with Greene on her threat to oust Johnson, making the impeachment attempt even more of a ridiculous sideshow. It’s also hilarious that it’s Greene—who spearheaded the sham impeachment to begin with—who is derailing it.

If Johnson is capable of learning, this should be a lesson to him about trying to appease the hard-right faction of his party. Greene not only filed this embarrassing motion to impeach, but she’s also on the impeachment managers team. Letting her loose on the Senate floor during what’s supposed to be a serious moment is a dangerous move.

Greene gave a preview of her possible antics during a DHS budget hearing Tuesday morning.

“I demand that Chuck Schumer holds your impeachment trial in the Senate, because that’s exactly what we should be focused on right now,” Greene told Mayorkas. Sure, Marge. Sure. 

Greene’s demand means squat to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement, Schumer said. “Talk about awful precedents. This would set an awful precedent for Congress."

The Senate is not going to convict Mayorkas, as even some Republicans think it’s bullshit. But senators are still obligated to take time out of a hectic week to deal with the charade. They have to spend time Tuesday receiving the articles, and then they will have to waste a chunk of Wednesday being sworn in as jurors, even though the impeachment push is going nowhere. 

The whole spectacle is just one more example of House Republicans’ ineptitude and what happens when they let the likes of Greene run the show.

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House speaker delays doomed-to-fail impeachment trial

Posted on by Kaili Joy Gray

House Speaker Mike Johnson had a plan. He had planned to finally—finally—send the articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week, even though the impeachment, as he well knows, is dead on arrival because even Republican senators can’t get it up to convict.

But now, according to The Hill, Johnson has a new plan. And the new plan is to keep waiting.

“To ensure the Senate has adequate time to perform its constitutional duty, the House will transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate next week,” a Johnson spokesperson said.

What difference could one week make? Probably none. There is so little enthusiasm for this ridiculous Republican stunt to try to embarrass the Biden administration that Johnson couldn’t even get the impeachment through the House the first time he tried. Despite his efforts, he managed to embarrass only himself. 

Johnson tried again a week later and just barely pulled it off, but he and his fellow Republicans have been sitting on their impeachment since February waiting for … well, it isn’t entirely clear what they’ve been waiting for.

Several of their colleagues in the Senate have made it pretty clear that they couldn’t care less about this impeachment. So much so that some have suggested they might even help Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer dismiss the whole thing without a trial.

Because while the Republicans in the House have convinced themselves that Mayorkas did very bad things like supporting President Joe Biden’s policies, Republicans in the Senate are willing to admit that’s not an actual crime.

“If there is a policy difference, it’s with the president,” Mitt Romney said, “not the secretary that reports to him.”

And in case that isn’t clear enough, Romney told Axios he doesn't "think the constitutional standard of high crime and misdemeanor has been met." 

Even Romney’s fellow Utahn Mike Lee, who apparently made the request to postpone, doesn’t sound all that jazzed about the impeachment trial.

He said he was “very grateful” that Johnson was willing to delay the impeachment process yet another week, under the theory that if the Senate gets the paperwork earlier in the week, it will somehow change senators’ hearts and minds and make them more eager to carry out this charade.

“It’s much better for us to do this at the beginning of a legislative week rather than toward the end of one and I thank him for doing that,” Lee said.

Okay, sure. Just wait a little bit longer and the Senate will come around. But perhaps, just to be safe, Johnson should give it another week after that. And another week after that. And another week …. 

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‘It’s crap. Pure crap’: Senators look to quickly dismiss Mayorkas impeachment

Posted on by Joan McCarter

House Republicans are ready to take their sham impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week, where they’ll likely find a hostile jury. That’s if the Senate decides to even have a trial.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made it clear in February, after the House voted to impeach, that he views the whole fiasco a waste of time. 

“This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans,” he said in a statement.  “House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime. House Republicans failed to show he has violated the Constitution. House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense.” 

Last month, he called the whole thing “absurd.”

The House impeachment managers—including extremists Andy Biggs of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia—will likely present their case on Wednesday, with senators sworn in as jurors on Thursday. Then it will just be a matter of how fast the Senate dispenses with it.

Schumer wrote to Democrats Friday, giving them a preview of the next few weeks of work, including impeachment, and hinted that his likely course of action will be to move to dismiss the charges. 

“I remind Senators that your presence next week is essential,” he wrote. That’s because he needs all Democrats present to vote on that motion to dismiss. 

He’ll have them. Even West Virginia’s Joe Manchin has trashed the impeachment. 

“It’s crap. Pure crap,” he told reporters in February. “No trial at all, it’s ridiculous. The trial will be in November. No. You start that craziness and play games and that stuff?” He added that Cabinet officials “work for the president. You got a problem, go to the polls.” 

He also said he believes there are sufficient votes to dismiss the impeachment. “I just want to get rid of it as quick as possible. You go down that path, that’s a slippery slope, you’ll never stop,” he said in February. 

There are at least three Republican senators—Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah—who have been skeptical enough about the whole thing to help Democrats dispense with this quickly. Romney even suggested in February that he’d vote to dismiss. 

“If there is a policy difference, it’s with the president, not the secretary that reports to him,” he said.

Republican leader Mitch McConnell paid lip service to conducting a trial in remarks last week, but didn’t show much enthusiasm for it. "[T]he Democrats have a majority, so it may not go on very long," McConnell told reporters. "But my preference would be to actually have a trial. But I think the majority is likely to prevent that."

Officially, Senate Republicans will make noises about having that trial. Republican Whip John Thune said at a recent leadership press conference that the House “has determined that Secretary Mayorkas has committed impeachable offenses” and that he thinks “the Senate needs to hold a trial.” How strenuously they’ll try to make that happen is another question—particularly considering who they’ll be teaming up with in the House. After all, Biggs and Greene will be among those coming to the Senate floor with this bullshit. How many GOP senators are going to want to ally with those guys?

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GOP House digs for new Biden dirt as sawdust ‘cocaine’ and Russian moles fail

Posted on by Joan McCarter

The Biden impeachment resolution the House GOP unanimously approved last December has hilariously collapsed (Russian moles, sawdust “cocaine”), but that’s not stopping the utterly inept Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, from throwing spaghetti at the wall to make something stick. The chair of the House Oversight Committee made it clear that his intention is to amass as much “evidence” of alleged wrongdoing as he can, with an eye toward setting up criminal prosecutions for a hypothetical Trump presidency.

“Since January 2023, we’ve launched investigations into President Biden’s border crisis, energy crisis, federal pandemic spending, federal agency telework policies, abuse of power at the FTC, the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling schemes, the federal government’s efforts to combat CCP influence, and more,” Comer told Politico.

Those investigations, he promised, “will culminate in reports with our findings and recommended solutions to prevent government waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.” Expect that to be as solid as all the previous work from him and his fellow MAGA zealot Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The “and more” Comer referred to includes such burning questions as the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic (which occurred under Trump) and the administration’s use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Comer has made it clear that this volley of attacks is designed to generate criminal referrals.

“I want to hold the Biden family accountable. I believe the best way to hold the Biden family accountable is through criminal referrals. We’ve proven many crimes have been committed,” Comer told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy. “If the Merrick Garland Department of Justice will not hold this family accountable, then maybe if Trump is president, a Trey Gowdy Department of Justice can hold this family accountable.”

The Comer oversight overreach extends to a threat to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt if he doesn’t turn over the audio tapes of the interview special counsel Robert Hur conducted with President Biden in his classified documents probe. That’s after the disastrous hearing Jordan and Comer held last month, intended to show that Biden is too old and doddery to be trusted as commander in chief.

That backfired when the Justice Department released the transcript of the Biden interview, which showed that Biden’s memory was not failing, and in fact Hur remarked on Biden’s “photographic understanding and, and recall of the house” in Delaware where documents were found. But Comer and Jordan—who have been given free rein by GOP leadership to continue to embarrass them all—are sure that they can find some nugget of a cover-up on the part of Garland in all of this.

Mostly, though, they want to help Trump in his revenge plots. So they’re just going to keep burrowing into the hole they’ve dug. They could quit while they’re behind, but the need to avenge Trump just won’t let them.

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