The speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy has announced that he will support an ‘impeachment inquiry’ into president Joe Biden.
The impeachment inquiry will be handled by the oversight, judiciary and ways and means committees, all of which are controlled by McCarthy allies and since the start of the year have spent much of their time trying to make corruption allegations against the president stick.
McCarthy had earlier said that he would first ask for a vote from the full house on whether to do so. And indeed, when Nancy Pelosi was speaker he had condemned any suggestion that she might start an impeachment inquiry into serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) without first getting a vote in support.
In a sign of the paucity of the results of their efforts, reports indicate McCarthy does not yet have enough votes in support of impeaching Biden. Earlier this month, the speaker told Breitbart News, “If we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person,” but backtracked on Tuesday, making no mention of holding a vote to start the investigation.
So why the sudden change? Clearly for two reasons. One is that the utter nutters in his caucus demanded that he support an inquiry or they would move to strip him of his speakership. The second is that it seems like he would not be able to get the support of his entire party for such a vote and bringing it up would lead to an embarrassing defeat. So he swallowed what little pride he has left and announced his support without a vote.
Despite various Republican-led congressional committees working hard since last year, no concrete evidence has been brought forward that suggests that Biden has done anything wrong, only that he has a son who has had many personal demons and engaged in sleazy behavior. So this is clearly because of the anger felt by MAGA Republicans that their idol SSAT was impeached, even though there were obvious grounds for doing so. It is noteworthy that the twice-impeached SSAT has been lobbying hard for an impeachment of Biden.
Donald Trump has been in discussions with influential House Republicans over the party’s long-shot attempt to impeach Joe Biden over unproven corruption allegations relating to his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Trump was in contact with Elise Stefanik, the third most senior Republican in the House of Representatives, ahead of Tuesday’s announcement of an official impeachment inquiry by the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, Politico reported.
…Trump has also been reaching out to the hard right of the party, which has been waging a fierce pressure campaign to force McCarthy into calling an impeachment inquiry by threatening a government shutdown over federal spending levels.
Politico revealed that the former president dined with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extreme rightwing representative from Georgia, at his New Jersey golf club two nights before McCarthy’s announcement.
Greene told the New York Times she briefed Trump on her vision for an impeachment inquiry. She said she told him she hoped it would be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden”.
Trump’s behind-the-scenes lobbying of prominent House Republicans tallies with his increasingly shrill public calls for impeachment. The twice impeached former president posted on Truth Social last month: “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US.”
It is clear what SSAT’s motives are. He knows that there is no chance of Biden being convicted by the US Senate where even many Republicans are leery of this move. But what he wants is for the House to impeach so that when Biden is acquitted, he can claim parity with him, and that therefore his own impeachment is no big deal.
Since Republicans have such a tiny majority in the House, McCarthy and SSAT need pretty much everyone in their party to vote to impeach Biden because no Democrat will. But those Republicans who are from districts that Biden won in 2020 feel that doing so might well serve as a death knell on their chances for re-election. SSAT and McCarthy will have to do some serious cajoling, arm-twisting, and bribing to get an impeachment vote passed.
Let them disgrace themselves.
Anything that disgusts potential Republican voters is good for 2024.
An amusing bit that will come up is that the Trump DOJ held that an impeachment done without a vote is not valid and can’t issue subpoenas. I have no idea if this is really correct or not but it will have to be argued out in court and the Republicans will have to argue against something done by Trump during his impeachment. The contradiction won’t matter to the Republicans much but the time it takes may delay things too long.
Nothing like handing your opponents a weapon to kill you with.
Remember what happened when they impeached Clinton? They did it so that his reputation would be so smeared that he’d be politically dead.
Well, in the next midterms, the democrats wiped the floor with the republicans, beat them in a tidal wave. I was shrieking with laughter.
And, talk about people who haven’t learned from history and are doomed, etc.
I wish we could just point and laugh. Wacky Republicans would hate that since they generally take themselves very seriously.
Unfortunately, our media betters won’t do that because of their zeal to present “both sides”. The best we could hope for, even on a show like PBS Newshour or Washington Week …, would be an ofhand comment, quickly forgotten, about how the two sides aren’t precisely equivalent.
‘Both sides’, yes….on one side a geologist, on the other side a flat-Earther. One of this is not like the other…
Hey, Republicans -- what grounds do you have for impeaching Biden?
“They did it to us”!
Grounds? We dont need no stinking grounds. We am republicans.
It’s like the story of the emperor’s new clothes, except that the courtiers accuse the other emperor -- who is fully clothed -- of being naked.
Impeachment isn’t a court of law. It’s a political act. *raises one eyebrow* That’s literally what they are doing. Whether or not it is something they should do is “will this benefit them, politically”.