At last count, assorted congressional Republicans have expressed interest in impeaching Vice President Kamala Harris, six cabinet secretaries, the Trump-appointed director of the FBI, and a federal prosecutor. But there can be no doubt that one person is at the top of the list: President Joe Biden, who’s increasingly likely to face an impeachment inquiry, despite the inconvenient fact that there’s still no evidence that the Democrat has actually done anything wrong.
It was about a month ago when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy jolted the political world, declaring during a Fox News interview that Republicans’ investigations into Biden and his relatives had risen “to the level of impeachment inquiry.” Six days ago, the California congressman added he was prepared to advance this plan unless GOP lawmakers receive a series of documents — some of which Republicans hadn’t even requested.
Over the weekend, McCarthy went a little further. NBC News reported:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday that an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden is a “natural step forward” following Republican probes into the business dealings of the president and his family. In an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” McCarthy, R-Calif., was asked whether he plans to launch an impeachment inquiry when Congress returns next month.
The House speaker specifically said, “So, if you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry.”
McCarthy and I might have different definitions of “natural.”
As the process prepares to move forward, there are three key elements to keep in mind.
1. Some of McCarthy’s members are not on board with this bizarre scheme. Congressional Leadership 101 tells us that good leaders find issues that divide opponents and unite allies. McCarthy has a knack for uniting opponents and dividing allies, and this fixation on an impeachment inquiry is clearly part of the pattern.
One unnamed House Republican told CNN, for example, “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that. And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t I don’t think the evidence exists.”
With plenty of other GOP members having already made similar comments, McCarthy is reportedly prepared to open an impeachment inquiry without a vote, probably because he suspects such a vote would lose. (In 2019, McCarthy insisted that a floor vote was necessary to initiate an impeachment inquiry. Perhaps he’s forgotten.)
2. Other Republicans want to skip the “inquiry” and proceed with drawing articles. While McCarthy faces some pressure from members representing competitive districts, many of whom want the party to steer clear of this strange crusade, the House speaker is simultaneously facing related pressure from the opposite direction.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, for example, argued earlier this month that an impeachment inquiry is an offensive waste of time — the Florida Republican wants to skip it and proceed “more explicitly towards impeachment” — while Donald Trump has been increasingly vocal in denouncing this approach. “Biden is a Stone Cold Crook,” the former president wrote by way of his social media platform yesterday. “You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven. … Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!”
Or put another way, McCarthy is facing pressure from Republicans who say that an impeachment inquiry is a bridge too far, and from Republicans who are arguing that it doesn’t go far enough.
3. There’s still no incriminating evidence. The GOP lawmaker who was afraid to be candid on the record was entirely right: Republicans have spent 2023 looking for evidence of wrongdoing they could use against the president. They’ve failed spectacularly. McCarthy seemed to shrug this off yesterday, telling Fox News that an impeachment inquiry would provide Congress with “the apex of legal power to get all the information they need.” In other words, the House speaker is prepared to move forward with this gambit, not despite the lack of evidence, but because of it: The prospective inquiry is intended to find proof that the party currently lacks. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work. McCarthy doesn’t seem to care. Revisiting our earlier coverage, a couple of weeks before the 2022 midterm elections, then-House Minority Leader McCarthy was asked about the prospects of impeachment crusades if House Republicans retook the majority in the chamber. The future House speaker downplayed the possibility. “I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” the GOP leader told Punchbowl News in late October. Asked if anyone in the Biden administration had done anything that warranted impeachment proceedings, McCarthy added, “I don’t see it before me right now.” I wrote a prediction of sorts soon after, suggesting the decision might not be entirely his to make: McCarthy was positioned to become speaker, but if his members were determined to impeach someone, and if a certain former Republican president started barking orders, McCarthy would likely lack the political strength to throw cold water on the intra-party fire. With each passing day, the House speaker takes steps to prove the thesis true. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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