Former President Donald Trump wants House Republicans to get behind his vendetta against Joe Biden and the Democrats and to impeach him.
“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democratic fraud should be immediately primaried and get out,” Trump said last weekend at a campaign appearance in Erie, Pa. “We got a lot of good, tough Republicans around … People are going to run against them and people are going to win.”
Politico alleges that Trump has put the screws on Speaker Kevin McCarthy about impeaching Biden. It claims that the slim margin of the GOP majority has put a sword of Damocles over his head. He must either give into Trump’s will or he loses the speakership. McCarthy’s 222-seat majority gives him little wiggle room.
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., has pushed for the expungement of the two Trump impeachments.
House Republicans Divided Over Joe Biden Impeachment
Many Republicans have expressed concern that the allegations against President Joe Biden have not been fully vetted and want more corroboration.
“I don’t know how anyone, any objective reasonable person couldn’t come to the conclusion that this appears to be impeachment-worthy,” Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., a member of the Freedom Caucus, said last week.
An Impeachment Inquiry is Not Impeachment
“The speaker has said that there may be an impeachment inquiry. That is not impeachment. That is Congress continuing its responsibilities to look into the issues that have been raised,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., worries the Republicans could lose their House majority if they push too hard on impeachment.
“Well, I do believe we are, at this point, an inquiry is different from an impeachment vote and is another tool in the toolbox,” Mace said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” with Shannon Bream. “I will tell you, every time we walk the plank, we are putting moderate members, members [in Biden-won districts]. We are putting those seats at risk for 2024. We are putting the majority at risk. And it’s not just impeachment that does that. Other issues, like abortion, et cetera, also put those members on the plank.”
Mace contends that Republicans cannot file impeachment charges against Biden without a thorough inquiry.
Democrats Don’t See a High Crime or a Misdemeanor
Democrats are not seeing anything that Republicans can stick on Joe Biden.
“I assume that Donald Trump, the presumed frontrunner for the GOP nomination doesn’t want to be the only impeached candidate in the presidential election campaign, so they want to add impeachment to Joe Biden’s resume,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who prosecuted the second Trump case, told USA TODAY. “But the only thing they’re missing is a high crime or misdemeanor. And that’s the constitutional standard. You don’t impeach people because you disagree with their policy positions or because you need to gain some political leverage.”
Democrats also dismissed the allegations in the FBI FD-1023 form that claims that Joe Biden accepted a $5 million bribe in exchange for getting Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin fired.
“It’s true that Hunter Biden almost certainly owed his Burisma gig to his family name, a sleazy arrangement if not an illegal or uncommon one. (See, for example, the $2 billion investment Jared Kushner received from a Saudi investment fund over the objections of the fund’s own advisers, which found the operations of Kushner’s firm “unsatisfactory in all aspects.”) Republicans have demonstrated, if it wasn’t clear already, that Hunter is a deeply compromised figure who should never hold any position of public trust. But Joe Biden wasn’t acting in his son’s interest when he called for the removal of Shokin,” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg writes.
“Shokin’s removal was a priority for Ukraine’s Western allies because he was, as The New York Times reported in 2016, “widely criticized for turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and for defending the interests of a venal and entrenched elite.” Among those Shokin was alleged to have protected was none other than Mykola Zlochevsky, head of Burisma.”
Republicans are going to have to corroborate the FD-1023 before thinking about impeaching Joe Biden.
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.
From 19FortyFive
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