The process for presidential impeachment is supposed to follow an obvious linear pattern. Members start with a question in the form of a controversy. This leads to a congressional investigation, featuring hearings, document requests, and fact-finding exercises. If there’s evidence of wrongdoing, the process advances further, with a formal inquiry, additional hearings, articles of impeachment, and possible floor votes.
As House Speaker Kevin McCarthy goes after President Joe Biden, with the new announcement of an impeachment inquiry, we’re watching a twisted version of the process unfold. After all, House Republicans have found no evidence of wrongdoing against their target — which, in theory, seems like a basic prerequisite.
But at the heart of the problem is the fact that GOP members didn’t start with a question and move forward, they started with an answer and worked backward.
The House Republicans’ anti-Biden impeachment push isn’t at all new. Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa first raised the prospect of impeaching Biden in early 2020 — months before the Democrat had even secured his party’s nomination. The Iowan, relying on her best passive voice, said at the time, “I think this door of impeachable whatever has been opened.”
In hindsight, the use of the word “whatever” was significant.
In March 2022, nearly a year before he’d take over as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said, in reference to presidential impeachment, “I think that’s definitely a discussion we have to have.” He didn’t say why, because, by all appearances, the rationale was irrelevant.
A month later, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was hearing so much chatter among his members about impeaching Biden — for reasons unknown — that the Californian felt the need to throw cold water on the whole idea. (He was less weak at that point than he is now.)
As the 2022 midterm elections drew closer, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace appeared on “Meet the Press” and told NBC News’ Chuck Todd that there was “a lot of pressure” on GOP members to move forward with presidential impeachment. The South Carolinian didn’t say why, exactly, the party would advance such a process, what Biden had done wrong, or what kind of evidence the Republicans had compiled against the president, but none of that seemed to matter. The party was simply expected to pursue such an effort — because of “impeachable whatever.”
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said around the same time that the party would have to pursue impeachment against Biden in 2023 or the GOP base would feel “betrayed.” Of course, in the Land of Adults, Congress doesn’t launch a presidential impeachment process just to make certain groups of voters feel better. But therein lies the point. It’d be one thing if congressional investigators had stumbled onto devastating information, sparking demand for the impeachment process. But that’s largely the opposite of what’s actually happened: The demand was already there. Assorted partisans and ideologues simply needed to come up with some kind of post-hoc rationalization to justify what they’d already decided to do. What the hapless House speaker announced today was less of a procedural step and more of a scam.
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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