Some House GOP lawmakers push Biden impeachment, but leadership is cautious
Max Thornberry
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House Republicans have introduced multiple impeachment resolutions against President Joe Biden, focused largely on what they call lax enforcement of the U.S. border with Mexico. Other House impeachment efforts target Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the border issue and over investigations, or lack thereof, regarding bad boy presidential son Hunter Biden.
But just because a batch of high-profile House Republicans are pushing to oust Biden and members of his team from office doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. House Republican leaders have many considerations on the impeachment front. Starting, of course, with whether evidence exists to warrant a removal attempt. Then there’s the potential political blowback should the narrow House majority move ahead, considering impeachment efforts are virtually guaranteed to fail in the Senate, where there’s nowhere near a two-thirds majority willing to convict.
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Impeachment rhetoric, if not House action, is likely to play a prominent role in the 2024 campaign season. GOP lawmakers and candidates will be looking to burnish their conservative bona fides, along with seeking revenge for the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump, the Republican 2024 front-runner aiming for a White House return.
Both Trump impeachments failed in the Senate, part of an evolution of a one-time political nuclear weapon that has become more commonplace. President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House in 1998 and then acquitted in the Senate, mirroring the outcome 130 years earlier in Reconstruction-era efforts to remove President Andrew Johnson from office. In 1974 President Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate before the full House voted on impeachment, which would have likely ended in his conviction and removal.
The efforts to impeach and remove Trump animated House Republicans in the minority, and are driving the majority that clawed its way to dominance in the 2022 midterm elections. Despite cries that the impeachments of Trump were baseless, a breach of tradition, and political persecution against a disfavored personality because of personal grievances, Republican leaders will face increased intraparty pressure to investigate Biden.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has been noncommittal about impeachment proceedings. So have members of his House leadership team. But with impeachment still very much a live opportunity, here’s what proceedings might look like and who they would target.
President Joe Biden
As the biggest logistical lift, putting Biden on trial in the Senate appears unlikely for House Republicans. But House GOP lawmakers have been toying with efforts to do so since Biden took office in 2021 and they were still in the minority.
When Democrats successfully impeached Trump and twice sent him to the Senate, Republicans swore the rules of the game had changed. They promised to treat the next Democratic president with an equal level of scrutiny.
“Anything you do to us, we can do to you,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in 2019 after the first resolution to impeach Trump passed the House. “We have some people on our side just as crazy as people on their side.”
As soon as Biden stepped into the Oval Office, Republicans trained their sights on him. They have introduced 10 impeachment resolutions for the president, none of which were taken up for a floor vote or agreed to in the House.
Since taking the House majority in January, Republicans have continued their efforts. They’ve shifted the focus away from a bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan and “undermining the energy security” of the country to zero in on the Biden administration’s immigration policies.
The five House impeachment resolutions introduced this Congress charge Biden, in varying ways, with abusing his power, refusing to maintain control of the southern border, and not finishing building a wall along the border.
In recent weeks, Republicans considered dueling impeachment resolutions regarding the president and what he says he did and didn’t know about questionable business deals his son Hunter Biden cut with Ukrainian and Chinese businessmen.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced a resolution in June accusing the president of weaponizing his office to “shield the business and influence peddling schemes of his family from congressional oversight and public accountability.”
One of the resolutions, introduced by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), survived its political infancy and has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee. That’s effectively a way for House Republican leaders to put the Boebert impeachment effort on ice for now while keeping open the option to take it up later.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
A recent shift away from targeting the president for his immigration and border security policies hasn’t slaked Republicans’ thirst for accountability on the issue.
The consensus among conservatives, and some Democrats representing districts along or near the southern border, is that a genuine problem plagues the country’s immigration policies. But given the fact that Democrats control the Senate, an attempt to put a political head on a spike might be easier if members are aiming a little lower than the White House.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been in the caucus’s crosshairs as long as Biden. Four Mayorkas impeachment resolutions this Congress could bear some fruit as the efforts have caught on in the Senate as well.
None of the resolutions introduced by Reps. Pat Fallon (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Clay Higgins (R-LA) have been agreed to in the House. But the House has started hearings to grill Mayorkas about his leadership.
“This is not a case of negligence. If it were, the implications would be different. The remedy would be different,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) said during the first hearing last month. “Intentional sabotage of the rule of law is something entirely different. It is an affront to the separation of powers to the institutional authority of the Congress, under the Constitution, and it invites another remedy — and that is impeachment.”
The varying resolutions to impeach Mayorkas accuse him of presiding “over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement” and failing to “maintain operational control” over the border.
Under the leadership of Biden and Mayorkas, illegal border crossings have skyrocketed.
“With over five million alien encounters and more than 1.5 million known gotaways at our Southwest border, Secretary Mayorkas’s complete dereliction of duty has created a historic crisis and endangered every American by ceding operational control of our border to violent cartels,” House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) told the Washington Examiner.
“Under Speaker McCarthy’s leadership, Homeland Republicans are leaving no stone unturned in our oversight investigation, which will demand answers from the Biden administration and ensure we hold Secretary Mayorkas accountable for his refusal to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, his cancellation of effective border security policies, and his misleading statements to Congress and America,” Green said. “This Committee’s mission is to secure our sovereign borders — and we will not stop until we succeed in that mission.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland
The effort to target Attorney General Merrick Garland in this Congress received new life when two IRS whistleblowers alleged widespread interference by the Department of Justice in investigations into Hunter Biden.
Republican grievances with Garland stretch back to the beginning of his tenure as attorney general. Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA) and Marjorie Taylor Greene each filed a resolution to impeach him during the last Congress, arguing he had “politicized” the DOJ, citing a memo referencing concerned parents at school board meetings as “domestic terrorists” and “endangering, compromising, and undermining the justice system of the United States by facilitating the persecution of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s, political rival, Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States.”
Greene introduced another impeachment resolution in May, reviving the accusations of the DOJ’s politicization, the school board memo, and Garland’s authorization of an investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left the White House.
Following the revelation of the two IRS whistleblowers’ testimony that U.S. Attorney David Weiss was prevented from bringing charges against Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., and California, as well as being denied a request to receive special counsel status, Kevin McCarthy voiced his own support for considering an attempt to remove Garland from office.
“We need to get to the facts, and that includes reconciling these clear disparities. U.S. Attorney David Weiss must provide answers to the House Judiciary Committee,” McCarthy tweeted last month. “If the whistleblowers’ allegations are true, this will be a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland’s weaponization of DOJ.”
Potential political blowback
Despite touting efforts to hold Biden and his top officials accountable as the meatiest part of election season approaches, Democrats are skeptical the approach is going to persuade voters to show up for Republicans.
“I think it kind of just speaks to where Republicans’ priorities are and how just out of step they are with what the American people kind of care about,” one Democratic aide told the Washington Examiner.
The aide noted while Biden is “focused on lowering healthcare costs and bringing jobs back to America,” Republicans are pushing “political stunts” and trying to find a way to show up on TV.
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Pushing political attacks onto the airwaves is risky business, as it offers Democrats a “very natural contrast” to talk about achievements they’ve secured and hold them up against Republicans’ intransigence on popular legislation in favor of quixotic attempts to punish their political enemies.
“If their theory of the case next year is to be talking about whatever political stuff that they’ve done over the last two years, then I think the American people are going to look at them and be like, ‘How does this make my life any better?’” the aide said. “And that, I think, is a huge risk for a party that is really, really struggling to connect with everyday Americans and prove to these everyday Americans that they care about their lives.”