Republicans are divided on impeaching Biden as the panel launches a new investigation

Republicans are deeply divided about impeaching President Biden, with newly energized lawmakers from the far right pushing to do so and leaders and rank and file concerned they’ve entered a politically risky battle they can’t win.

A vote last month to send articles of impeachment against Mr Biden over his border policies to the Homeland Security Committee, along with the Judiciary Committee, amounted to a delaying tactic by Chairman Kevin McCarthy to quell urgent calls for action from the hard right . But it also exposed dissensions in the House GOP over moving forward and complicating a separate months-long drive by the panel to prepare an impeachment case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas. for the same crimes.

Neither pursuit seems to have the votes to go ahead, and many Republicans fear that without a stronger case against the president, even attempting the move could prove disastrous for their party.

Several rank-and-file Republicans from politically competitive districts had objected to the idea of ​​impeaching Mr. Mayorkas, even after Mr. McCarthy approved that push. Few believe that Mr Biden’s new investigation — a hastily arranged effort to halt a right-wing attempt to impeach the president without any investigation — will produce anything that might persuade them to impeach him.

“We are supposed to impeach major crimes and misdemeanors,” said Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and a moderate who previously stated that he opposed impeaching Mr. Mayorkas over a policy disagreement. When asked if he was more inclined to support Mr Biden’s impeachment for the same reason, he replied: “Not really.”

Even among Republicans who favor removing Mr Biden, there is strong skepticism about whether focusing on his border policies is the best place to build an impeachment suit against him.

“To be honest, I think our issue is a side issue — it’s not the main issue here,” said Representative Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican and member of the Homeland Security Panel. He said allegations of financial impropriety involving the president’s son Hunter Biden, which are being investigated by the House Oversight Committee, are “where the president is really going to get most of his trouble.”

But that panel has yet to produce any evidence of Mr Biden’s wrongdoing, despite months of scrutiny and frequent public claims by senior Republican executives that he engaged in corrupt and potentially criminal conduct.

The push to oust Mr Biden comes amid a fierce battle between Mr McCarthy and a right-wing faction of his party that has been openly rebelling since he struck a debt ceiling deal with the president. That faction includes Representative Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, who forced a vote in June demanding that Mr Biden be investigated over allegations that he had “deliberately facilitated a full and total invasion on the southern border.” Her resolution did not mention Mr Mayorkas.

The measure put Mr. McCarthy in an uncomfortable position. Despite his frequent criticism of Mr Biden for “abandoning” the country with “open borders policies”, the speaker has reversed efforts to impeach the president, arguing that Republicans have yet to formulate a good reason for doing so .

The move also forced the House Homeland Security Committee to flip abruptly, barely a week after Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the panel, presented a 55-page report detailing “why Secretary Mayorkas should be investigated for his border crisis” – the preliminary findings of an investigation he has been announcing for months.

Since early spring, Mr. Green has brought an extensive case against Mr. Mayorkas. The representative took his panel to visit points along the US-Mexico border as he sought to substantiate his claim that the secretary is responsible for rising illegal entries, drug and cartel-related crime and a drop in morale among border guards.

He recently suggested to reporters that the mandate to investigate Mr Biden could be an extension of his current plans to scrutinize Mr Mayorkas. in his duty.

“We have investigated the complete failures, the complete failures of the Biden administration on the southwestern border,” said Mr. Green to reporters, adding that when it comes to Mr. Biden, “we’ll dig deep into it.”

It was not clear what exactly he meant. While Mr Green has often argued that Mr Mayorkas is guilty of carrying out the Biden government’s border plans, he has also argued that the case against the secretary is more egregious than mere policy disagreement. He has accused him of “violating or subverting at least 10 laws” and “blatantly lying under oath to the United States Congress on several occasions and lying to the American people at least 58 times” — the Department of Homeland indictment Security denies .

Mr Green has also avoided describing the purpose of his panel’s work as “impeachment”, saying it would be for the Judiciary Committee to make such decisions. That position now clashes with the House’s explicit instruction for its committee to investigate Mr Biden on impeachment charges.

The Judiciary Committee traditionally writes and approves articles of impeachment before sending them to the vote of the full House. The recent vote on Ms. Boebert’s measure sent the articles against Mr. Biden to both panels.

Lacking a clear direction, Republicans on the homeland security panel are struggling to figure out how to prioritize their new indictment targeting Biden without undermining their ongoing investigation into Mr. Mayorkas. Some suggested the new priority would extend the commission’s work on Mr Mayorkas, which Mr Green had predicted would be completed in early autumn.

“It could change the timing,” Texas Republican Representative Austin Pfluger said, adding that while it was “probably important” to continue on both tracks, the referral for Mr. Biden made that line of inquiry “really important.”

Others suggested that closing a case against Mr Mayorkas would only help them build an argument against Mr Biden, who dictated the policies Mr Mayorkas implemented.

“Our focus with Secretary Mayorkas was entirely on immigration law enforcement and border policy, but I think the topic was limited,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop said. “This inevitably opens it up to other questions.”