A Revenge Impeachment

Today, news that House Republicans are prepared to move forward with a floor vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. It’s a vote designed, at least in their eyes, to legitimize the manufactured impeachment effort. As we discussed when MAGA got impeachment fever in September, it’s baseless. It is not grounded in even a scintilla of fact. There is nothing Joe Biden is credibly alleged to have done that qualifies as a high crime and misdemeanor, the constitutional standard for impeaching a president. It is disproven rumor and innuendo, smoke and mirrors.

A vote on an impeachment inquiry isn’t meant to be a rubber stamp on a fishing expedition. It is supposed to be based on serious concerns and legitimate information that a president failed to live up to the obligations his oath requires of him, as was the case with both Trump impeachments. Even Republicans conceded they lacked that as to Biden when the House Oversight Committee took their stab at this back in September, and their “evidence” has not gotten any better since then. Joe Biden is not his son Hunter. While former prosecutors have suggested that Hunter Biden is being prosecuted for charges that would not have been brought had his last name not been Biden, and however the case against him turns out, Joe Biden is not charged with wrongdoing and has not implicated in it. You can be sure that if he was, Republicans would be trumpeting it from the hilltops. But they are not, because their impeachment is the proverbial nothingburger.

We discussed that Nothingburger here on Civil Discourse back in September and our conclusions are worth reviewing, because nothing has changed. That is, nothing except Republicans’ apparent willingness to proceed with nothing but partisan frivolity beneath their wings.

In September, I wrote, “They have speculation, rumor, and innuendo. Despite their best efforts to come up with something, Republicans are still empty-handed.” But You didn’t have to take my word for it. Freedom Caucus member Ken Buck (R-Co) said at the time, “The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence...That doesn’t exist right now.” Other Republicans, including North Carolina’s Nancy Mace and Arkansan French Hill agreed that there was insufficient evidence to launch impeachment proceedings—let alone enough to bring articles of impeachment. But today, without any new developments in the evidence, House Speaker Mike Johnson said an impeachment inquiry vote is a “necessary step” and something he thinks “we have to do at this juncture.”

As if to underline that they’ve got nothing, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky) resorted, again, to mischaracterizing repayments of loans within the Biden family as sketchy transactions. Comer’s spokesman sent an email to members of the press, reported in the Washington Post, that claimed three payments of $1,380 made from Hunter Biden to his Dad in 2018 (when Biden was neither president nor vice president) were “part of a pattern revealing Joe Biden knew about, participated in and benefited from his family’s influence-peddling schemes.” In fact, they were payments related to a car of his Dad’s that Hunter Biden was using.

This is becoming a practiced routine where Congressman Comer is concerned. Last month he was on the warpath over a payment Joe Biden received from his brother James. Comer claimed money from the family’s foreign business dealings was being funneled to Joe Biden, despite ample evidence it was simply repayment of a loan. Biden was not in office, or even an announced candidate, at the time it occurred.

But sure. Why not. The House has yet to pass a budget for the fiscal year that began November 1, but go ahead and waste your time on meaningless impeachment votes in lieu of any number of necessary items that would demonstrate a real commitment to governing. The only logical conclusion we can reach is Republicans aren’t interested in public service, only in holding onto power. And apparently it hasn’t dawned on some of them that the authoritarian they hope to return to the White House is with them for as long as they toe the line. If you’re a Liz Cheney whose conscience bubbles over or a Mike Pence, who, despite moving even his water bottle in sync with Trump drew the line at rejecting a lawful vote for Joe Biden, Trump is through with you. The power is his. If he’s returned to office—the ultimate goal of this shameless flirtation with damaging Joe Biden—the power won’t belong to the people, the Republican party, or even to Trump’s current sycophants. It will be all his, Trump’s, to do with as he wishes. Even though everything Trump touches dies, including his House Speakers and his lawyers, Republicans do not seem to have learned the lesson. And the rest of us have to suffer for it.

So, here we are, on the way to a stunt of an impeachment vote based on false allegations. Republicans don't have a case for impeaching Joe Biden. But taking a leaf from Donald Trump's book, they are announcing the investigation. And as we know from Trump’s playbook, once you announce an investigation, the opportunities to dirty up your opponent, especially in advance of an election, are endless. This is precisely the strategy Trump was trying to use when his efforts to withhold aid from Ukraine until President Zelenskyy announced a (bogus) investigation into Biden’s corruption got Trump impeached for the first time. It is what House Republicans have landed on for 2024. Sometimes history actually does rhyme.

“I did brief [Trump] on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Marjorie Taylor Greene told The New York Times back in September. Greene added that she told Trump she wants the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” That’s hardly the serious process for times of profound national crisis that the Founding Fathers envisioned when they created our impeachment process.

Republicans are not in Congress to govern. They haven’t prioritized good governance or any governance at all since taking control of the House. What happens if they take control of the Senate or the White House in 2024? We need look no further than the Senate’s inability to confirm hundreds of high-ranking military officers because of sheer pettiness, and perhaps, stupidity, to understand the disaster that looms.

One of the challenges as we go into the next election cycle is making sure people remember what Republicans have done—and left undone. There will be dog whistles and rumormongering and October surprises aplenty, to say nothing of voter suppression, Roger Stone-level dirty tricks, and Trump’s lies. It is important to make sure people understand, in a moment where democracy is still fragile and there is so much trouble in the world, that we must have leadership that believes in governing, not in political theater. Prepare for the conversations ahead of you. With so much going on, it’s hard for people going about their lives to keep all of this in focus. And we can help with that by keeping this awareness front and center.

Thank you for being here and for reading this. I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Civil Discourse if you haven’t already. You’re welcome to subscribe for free. Knowledge is power, and I’m committed to sharing it. I appreciate those of you who are able to become paid subscribers to Civil Discourse. Your support lets me devote more time and resources to this work.

We’re in this together,

Joyce