Is a Biden impeachment drumbeat getting louder?
It would seem so, given the revelations from two House committees about Biden family corruption that leads back to the “big guy,” President Joe Biden.
If so, Republicans need to avoid making the same mistakes that Democrats did in their first impeachment against Donald Trump in 2019 over the Ukraine phone call.
There are some parallels between where Republicans are now and where Democrats were at this point in 2019, a time when a Donald Trump impeachment didn’t seem very likely.
In fact, it seemed almost unthinkable after special counsel Robert Mueller’s report slashed the hopes and dreams of Democrats. And thus, only the party’s leftwingers like Rep. Maxine Waters, were making noise.
At that point, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t want an impeachment. It’s not really clear she ever did, but lacked control over her party’s firebrands.
Today, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy isn’t particularly interested in impeaching the president. Though, he does seem open to impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland for possibly obstructing the investigation into Hunter Biden.
IRS whistleblowers told the House Ways and Means Committee the investigation was suppressed if matters led to Joe Biden. Meanwhile, an FBI informant has credibly accused the president of bribery while he served as vice president. So, there is certainly more momentum for a Biden impeachment investigation in July of 2023 than there was for Trump in July 2019.
Joe Biden: Towards an Impeachment Strategy
There are still only accusations and there is no smoking gun yet. But what if it’s true?
The Constitution says grounds for impeachment are “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Every other Presidential impeachment–Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump–was only for high crimes and misdemeanors.
This one would stand out in history as the first impeachment of a president for bribery.
But Republicans should be deliberative, and build a factual case, even if it drags into 2024. And keep it focused.
In 2019, Democrats betrayed their eagerness to ram articles of impeachment through the House by the end of the year. They built a weak case, first calling it a quid-pro-quo, later trying to make the case that Trump tried to bribe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and later saying he tried to extort him. Neither was very compelling. Eventually, Democrats settled for “abuse of power,” which could mean almost anything, and “obstruction of Congress,” a non-crime trying to conflate obstruction of justice with contempt of Congress. It turned into perhaps the lamest impeachment case in history.
Pelosi would have been wiser to go with her initial instincts and tell her firebrands “no” instead of caving.
But regarding the timeline parallels, recall that before Pelosi finally yielded, she first attempted to have a string of “contempt of Congress” votes against Trump Cabinet officials (Attorney General Bill Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin) to appease the members.
McCarthy seems to be doing something similar here with talk of impeaching Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, or FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Also, recall in July 2019, Pelosi allowed a doomed-to-fail impeachment motion on the House floor by Rep. Al Greene to be voted on. It failed in a lopsided 332-95 vote to table the motion. It was meant to allow members to burn off steam, but didn’t work.
McCarthy went a step further in letting an impeachment resolution survive. In one respect, Rep. Lauren Boehlert’s resolution to impeach Biden for dereliction of duty over the border seemed a little pointless given all we know about Biden family corruption. But instead of just having a cheap floor debate, as occurred with the Greene resolution in 2019, House Republicans actually referred her resolution to committees for review. It could be seen as a quiet way of killing a measure–but it’s still technically alive and will linger.
The bigger issue is that members of both the House Oversight and Judiciary committees are pushing impeachment over a credible bribery allegation against Joe from an FBI informant–as well as the WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden stating his father is sitting next to him when shaking down a Chinese business partner.
There may never be a smoking gun, thus no impeachment. But who expected this much information to surface by this point when House Republicans first commenced their probe?
Barbara Joanna Lucas is a writer and researcher in Northern Virginia. She has been a healthcare professional, political blogger, is a proud dog mom, and news junkie.
From 19FortyFive
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