Divided House Bypasses Biden Impeachment Vote But Launches Investigation
The Republican-led House on Thursday rejected a move to quickly impeach President Biden, but voted along party lines to open an impeachment inquiry as reluctant GOP leaders bowed to a member of their far-right who demanded to continue. deal with allegations that his immigration policy constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors.
By a vote of 219 to 208, the House referred two articles of impeachment against Biden — one for abuse of power and one for dereliction of duty — to the Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees. Speaker Kevin McCarthy engineered the move, allowing the articles of impeachment to continue without officially endorsing them. With the referral, he sought to ease pressure from right-wing lawmakers to immediately begin the process to remove Mr Biden from office, despite a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.
Colorado Republican Representative Lauren Boebert sparked the action by forcing a vote this week on a resolution accusing Mr Biden of orchestrating an “invasion” of the United States through a lax immigration policy that involves language commonly associated with replacement theory. a racist conspiracy theory that claims elites are working to replace white Americans with people of color invading the country.
That brought Mr McCarthy, who had previously said he still sees no basis for impeaching Mr Biden and was personally concerned that Republicans have not yet built a concrete case against the president, into a fraught debate that has left some of consider these colleagues premature. politically risky.
“Well, people have just been all about it,” McCarthy said in defense of referring the impeachment charges for further investigation. “We take the studies where the information tells us to.”
It was the latest display of Mr McCarthy’s tenuous hold on his troublesome backers, and the effort he’s going to take to appease hard-right lawmakers who were furious that he struck a deal with President Biden to suspend the debt limit and have since demanded more control over the agenda and which bills reach the House floor.
Democrats denounced the move as a farce and a reflection of how the Republican Party plays on its extremes, and a cowardly move to divert attention from the misdeeds of former President Donald J. Trump, who was indicted this month on charges that he mishandled classified national information. safety information and obstructed and lied to researchers about it.
“When the MAGA wingnuts say jump, Speaker McCarthy says how high,” said Massachusetts Democrat Representative Jim McGovern. “They can try as much as they want to depose Joe Biden, but all they do is depose themselves and make fun of this place.”
Ms Boebert was delighted with the vote, saying Mr Biden had “knowingly” violated federal immigration laws and should be removed.
“For the first time in 24 years, a Republican-led majority is moving forward with impeachment proceedings against a current president,” Boebert said Thursday.
Biden led the largest spike in illegal migration on the southern border in decades. During fiscal year 2022, Border Police officers arrested migrants who had illegally crossed the border more than 2.2 million times. The influx is part of a global migration trend, with people fleeing extreme poverty, violence and unstable regimes. It also led to large numbers of migrants crossing the border during the Trump administration.
In the past month, however, the number of border crossings has decreased significantly after the Biden administration introduced new border policies that limit access to asylum and create new legal avenues.
Ms Boebert’s decision to go ahead with her impeachment articles frustrated many Republicans in the conference, who want to discuss border policy but admit there is no clear evidence of crimes committed by Mr Biden or members of his cabinet that would meet the bar of serious crimes and offenses warranting removal from office.
“Impeachment is one of the most awesome powers Congress has to exercise,” said Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana. “It’s not something to be used lightly, especially in just two days.” Thats crazy.”
But he said he still voted to refer the articles of impeachment to committee. “That doesn’t mean I support impeachment,” he said. “Going to committee is the regular ordering process, which is how I think things should be done.”
Representative Stephanie Bice, an Oklahoma Republican and a prominent centrist, warned “we can’t make impulsive decisions because we’re angry.”
Mr. McCarthy has told members that if the investigation by Representative James E. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and Chairman of the Oversight Committee, into the Biden family business yields evidence of crimes, impeachment would be on the table.
But Ms. Boebert’s move sent Republican leaders looking for an exit to avoid an up or down vote on articles of impeachment, which would have divided Republicans and forced those from moderate districts to vote harder.
In an agreement with Ms Boebert that was struck on Wednesday, after an emergency meeting of the Rules Committee, Mr McCarthy’s team persuaded her to accept a face-saving compromise: a vote to refer her articles of impeachment to committees that hold hearings on the border had already planned. Referring bills to committee is also a tactic often used by legislators to quietly bury legislation they don’t want to pursue.
Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat of Mississippi and former chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, lamented the move that he said had made the powerful panel “a venue for a political presidential impeachment.”
“This cynical resolution has nothing to do with border security,” Mr Thompson said. “It has nothing to do with state law.” Instead, he said, it was a Republican attempt to divert attention from misconduct by Mr Trump, whom he referred to as the “twice-incriminated, twice-indicted party leader.”
Some Republicans hinted that the vote was in retaliation for how Democrats treated Mr. Trump when they controlled the House. Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia, said that “impeachment shouldn’t be political, it shouldn’t be arrogant,” implying that Democrats had conducted two impeachments against Mr. Trump on partisan grounds.
“We are well aware that the previous president has been impeached twice, and rightly so,” said Mr. McGovern in response.
Thursday’s action was, in a sense, a mirror image of what Democrats faced during the Trump presidency. In 2019, top Democrats spent months trying to delay impeachment charges against Trump, toiling to avoid plunging into what then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi thought would be a divisive and politically dangerous exercise.
But in July of that year, Representative Al Green, a progressive Texas Democrat, decided to force a vote to impeach Mr. Trump for racist statements. Instead of making a deal to allow Mr. Green to save face and put her party on the record in support of considering impeachment, Ms. Pelosi simply let the measure fail by a vote of 332 to 95.
Months later, after allegations surfaced that Mr. Trump was trying to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden, his political rival, Democrats voted to open the investigation that would lead to his first impeachment.
Impeachment of Mr Biden seems an unpopular prospect, and Mr McCarthy has long been aware of the threat such a move could pose to his fragile majority. He also warned his conference that false impeachment charges stand no chance of being convicted in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
a national Amherst survey from the University of Massachusetts released last year showed 66 percent of voters opposed impeachment, including 44 percent who said they strongly opposed the move.
Still, some members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus were eager to move forward, despite warnings from leaders that the move could backfire.
“There are people here who are tired of, ‘Hey, we’ll get it done next week,’ or ‘Wait a minute,'” said Rep. Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona. “I want some of these people to have to get tough votes here.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams said that instead of working with the administration to create jobs, cut costs and strengthen health care, “extreme House Republicans are carrying out baseless political stunts that do nothing to promote real help people and serve only to attract attention to themselves.” .”
Eileen Sullivan reporting contributed.