Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has a warning for Republicans on a Joe Biden Impeachment: You will get President Kamala Harris if you impeach Joe Biden and remove him from office. Gingrich resigned from Congress and the speakership following the 1998 midterm election in part due to his handling of the Clinton impeachment proceedings.
Clinton proved popular enough to beat back the Republican effort and to wound them politically. Gingrich does not believe that would happen should the Republican House of Representatives impeach Biden.
“The only short-term consequence of a successful impeachment is [Vice President] Kamala Harris [becoming president], and Kamala would be such a total disaster for the country that Biden’s corruption is probably preferable to her incompetence,” Gingrich said.
McCarthy Suggests Joe Biden Could Be Impeached
Gingrich’s comments follow on the heels of a statement by his successor Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The publication of the FBI FD-1023 form, combined with the testimony of IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapely and Joseph Ziegler, led McCarthy to broach the issue of impeaching Biden. The FD-1023 form cites sources who make the suggestion that Burisma chief Mykola Zlochevsky paid Biden $5 million to pressure former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“[T]his is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy said. “Because this president has also used something that we have not seen since Richard Nixon, used the weaponization of government to benefit his family and to deny Congress the ability to have oversight.”
Biden Allegations Offer Textbook Impeachment Cause
Former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz noted during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial that bribery was a classic reason for impeachment. He said the framers of the Constitution struck a balance between too much executive and legislative power in impeachment proceedings by enumerating “treason and bribery” as specific reasons for impeachment.
“If Republican House members are determined to impeach Biden, they should focus their investigative resources on specific allegations of serious crimes which, if true, may rise to the level of possibly impeachable offense. It will not do to rely on vague, partisan accusations of misconduct which, even if true, would not satisfy the criteria for impeaching and removing a duly elected president, as they themselves recently argued,” Dershowitz wrote last month.
Gingrich Supports Impeachment Inquiry
The chances of removing Biden in the event he is impeached is slim and none because it takes 67 senators to remove a president from office. Donald Trump’s second impeachment marked the first time a majority of senators voted to remove the then former president. Fifty-seven senators voted to remove and disqualify Trump, falling 10 votes short.
Democrats have shown themselves more disciplined and cohesive than their GOP counterparts.
Sen. John Barrasso shares Gingrich’s Harris fears.
“I think people don’t want Kamala Harris to take over,” Barrasso told The Washington Post.
Senators Skeptical of Impeachment
Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Trump in his first and second impeachment trials, expressed skepticism telling The Washington Post, “The bar is high crimes and misdemeanors, and that hasn’t been alleged at this stage.”
Republican Whip Sen. John Thune of South Dakota noted impeachment was not the way to get rid of Biden.
“I think the best way to change the presidency is to win the election,” Thune said.
The precedent set during the Trump impeachments has transformed impeachment into something akin to a vote of no confidence, as exists in parliamentary democracies. Impeaching Biden would expose politically damaging information during the 2024 political campaign and could take the political sting off of the Trump prosecutions. It would then be up to the voters to decide which candidate is the lesser of two evils.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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