Not long after Republican Rep. Mike Johnson became the new House speaker, many in his party started wondering what this would mean for the GOP’s impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden. Far-right members were optimistic that the Louisianan would allow the partisan crusade to advance.
Their hopes were rooted in fact. As recently as September, Johnson, as part of his role on the House Judiciary Committee, not only endorsed the evidence-free endeavor, he also falsely told the public that there’s “mounting evidence” of the president having “engaged in bribery schemes, pay-to-play schemes.”
Then, on his first full day with the speaker’s gavel, Johnson sat down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity and peddled anti-Biden assertions with no basis in fact.
But it was roughly 24 hours ago when the new House speaker took an additional step and argued that the Republicans’ impeachment inquiry is itself worthy of praise. A Washington Post analysis published Johnson’s quote from his Capitol Hill press conference.
“What you’re seeing right now is a deliberate constitutional process that was envisioned by the founders, the framers of the Constitution,” Johnson claimed at the news conference. “This is how they envisioned this to go, not the way the Democrats did it: snap impeachments, sham impeachments and all the rest.”
The GOP leader went to argue that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and his colleagues have done an “extraordinary job very methodically and I would say outside the scope of politics.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
In terms of the process that led to both of Donald Trump’s impeachments, both stand up well in hindsight. The idea that they were “shams” is belied not only by recent history, but also by the fact that they enjoyed bipartisan and popular support.
But it was Johnson’s comments about the ongoing process that stood out as bizarre. A variety of words come to mind to describe what GOP lawmakers have done so far, but “deliberate,” “extraordinary,” and “methodical” are not among them.
In case the House speaker didn’t notice, Republicans have only held one impeachment inquiry hearing, and as we discussed soon after, there was a bipartisan consensus that the event was an embarrassing fiasco. One senior GOP staffer described the proceedings as “an unmitigated disaster.” Another conceded that the Kentucky congressman and his staff “botched this bad.”
Steve Bannon, meanwhile, slammed GOP members for being unprepared, while one of his guests said House Republicans “don’t know what they’re doing at all.” In the days and weeks that followed, Comer continued to peddle a variety of unsubstantiated anti-Biden claims with no basis in reality. Even some conservative Republican lawmakers have conceded that the impeachment inquiry has no merit, and when the anti-Biden investigation failed to produce any credible evidence, after months of effort, many in the GOP made clear, publicly and privately, that they were “not happy“ with the failures. It’s against this backdrop that the House speaker said, with a straight face, that his party is to be applauded for the process, which he said has unfolded “outside the scope of politics.” Reality tells a very different story.
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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