Instead of focusing on how their incompetence threatens to shut down the government or how their de facto leader is a “one-man crime wave,” Republicans want to impeach President Joe Biden.
And what’s their case against the president?
This would usually be the point where I’d explain said case, using the question format as a rhetorical device to set up the answer. But this time, I really want to know: What is it?
Republicans don’t seem to know, either, instead emitting hazy and malformed allegations of corruption that have more to do with Biden’s son Hunter, who is literally being prosecuted by the same Justice Department that Republicans claim has been “weaponized” against them.
Thus, their impeachment probe — which is entering its next embarrassing chapter with its first hearing Thursday — is a solution in search of a problem. It deserves to be treated with the seriousness of the people conducting it. On that note, nominal House Speaker Kevin McCarthy approved the effort without a full House vote after claiming he wouldn’t do that. Doing so earlier this month, the California Republican vaguely cited “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption.” NBC News reported:
McCarthy’s decision is a major reversal after he told the conservative website Breitbart this month that he wouldn’t open an impeachment inquiry without a vote of the full House. He doesn’t appear to have enough votes to proceed on the issue, facing skepticism from across the GOP spectrum due to the lack of evidence implicating the president in Hunter Biden’s alleged transgressions.
“Lack of evidence” is the standout feature of the monthslong GOP boondoggle that has yet to produce a coherent theory of the case against the president.
But do right-wingers even need a good case, or any case at all, to impeach Biden?
Legally, not really. They just need the votes. The Constitution allows impeachment for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Notably, the document doesn’t define “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” leaving it to mean whatever the politicians voting on impeachment want it to mean. Getting down to the numbers, what we know is that the House would need to approve impeachment articles by a majority vote — the thing that McCarthy is apparently afraid of taking.
For a reminder of how this all played out in the impeachment cases — plural — of that alleged one-man crime wave, Donald Trump, his 2019 resolution contained two articles deemed high crimes and misdemeanors: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The first stemmed from the then-president using his office to solicit interference from Ukraine in the 2020 presidential election — namely, trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce an investigation into Biden, a political opponent of Trump’s. The second article stemmed from Trump’s “unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas” from the House during that inquiry. His 2021 impeachment, for incitement of insurrection, stemmed, of course, from the Jan. 6 insurrection. Analogizing to a criminal case, impeachment articles function as the charge, like an indictment, with the 100-member Senate, sitting as jury, needing to convict by a two-thirds vote. As we know, neither of Trump’s impeachment trials ended in conviction, with the first netting 48 and 47 guilty votes on the first and second articles, respectively, and the second trial garnering 57 guilty votes. The penalty for conviction is removal from office. Absent some revelation that Republicans have mysteriously been keeping to themselves all this time, the inquiry, such as it is, will mainly serve as a diversion from actual issues. We’re a long way off from all of that, if it ever comes — and, at the time of this writing, there isn’t reason to think it will, with the GOP-led House even skeptical, saying nothing of the Democratic-controlled Senate. Absent some revelation that Republicans have mysteriously been keeping to themselves all this time, the inquiry, such as it is, will mainly serve as a diversion from actual issues. With that in mind, it’s hard to see what we’ll learn from Thursday’s slate of witnesses, who don’t appear to be in a position to know the answer to that fundamental question of what this purported case is all about. Rather, the hearing will “focus on constitutional and legal questions surrounding the President’s involvement in corruption and abuse of public office,” a House Oversight Committee spokesperson said. The probe is being led by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the Oversight Committee; Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the Judiciary Committee; and Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chair of the Ways and Means Committee. To be sure, everyone loves some good constitutional and legal questions (though, at the risk of beating a dead investigation, I’d note that constitutional questions are legal questions). But to answer such questions, we need to operate from some baseline relevant facts that make those questions worth answering. To the extent that Republicans use the inquiry to develop actual evidence against the president, we can revisit this then.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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