Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) admitted privately that there is no justification for formal impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, yet over the weekend he announced that a vote on impeachment inquiry is an “important step.”
Luckily for Johnson, he was on Fox News, and so he wasn’t asked: Why. What has changed since he admitted they didn’t have any evidence to justify this?
The White House was curious.
The White House Spokesperson for Oversight and Investigations Ian Sams shared with us Monday morning, “Under fire for expelling George Santos, Speaker Johnson is throwing red meat to Marjorie Taylor Greene and the far right flank of the House GOP by pushing a full House vote on this illegitimate impeachment stunt.”
“He admitted there is no evidence to justify it three weeks ago, but he’s doing it anyway – further proof that this whole exercise is an extreme political stunt, rather than a legitimate pursuit of the truth. This baseless smear campaign is solely intended to satisfy their most extreme members and proves once again that these House Republicans are wasting time on the wrong priorities, instead of working with the President on real issues American families care about, like lowering costs, creating jobs, strengthening health care, and protecting our national security.”
Monday afternoon, after Sams’ comment, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) began waving around what he is suggesting is breaking news about Joe Biden that is for sure their smoking gun:
Rep. James Comer
Except this payment appears to be for Hunter Biden’s truck. Many parents actually pay for their adult children’s cars, especially these days. Loaning the money to an adult child does not seem to fit an impeachable offense — if it is, the parents of this country had best steel themselves as the House has the ability to impeach over treason, bribery, and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Additionally, Comer’s “news” is hardly “breaking.” Republicans already had this information, along with the entire U.S. press, because it was in Hunter Biden’s laptop that Republicans gave to conservative media outlets after it was allegedly left at a repair shop.
Of note, Hunter Biden is suing the Delaware computer repair shop: “Hunter Biden has never claimed the laptop was his, and the lawsuit also does not say he dropped the laptop off at Mac Isaac’s store. It does acknowledge that some of the data released publicly belongs to Hunter Biden and that Mac Isaac came into possession of it “by whatever means” in 2019.”
Watching the Republican-led House of Representatives, it might be easy to wonder why they assume they have the extra time and money to spend on a political, election-year based attack on the Democratic President of the United States. After all, they seemingly aren’t getting the basic work done that they are paid to do, except when Democrats step in to help them.
But as Sams has suggested, this empty attack is nothing but red meat. It also comes on the heels of House Republicans being displeased with Johnson (so soon!). But much worse than any of that is the fact that House Republicans set their minds on impeachment before finding any evidence to justify it. They are going to impeach Joe Biden without evidence, because that is how the law works under their leadership. Powerful people DECIDE who to target, and they can choose someone who poses a threat to their agenda, and then without evidence, they will throw the full weight of the U.S. House of Representatives and the taxpayers’ money at prosecuting an by all accounts innocent person for political purposes.
Impeachment is supposed to be based on evidence, like all prosecutions. It is not supposed to be a preordained decision that evidence is manufactured or conflated to justify. If Joe Biden were really corrupt, we’d all know it by now and we would be calling for his impeachment ourselves.
House Republicans are copying Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine, using U.S. aide to boot. They are using U.S. taxpayer funds to go after a political enemy they can’t beat fairly at the polls.
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