Last week, Republicans in the House were desperate for a reason to impeach President Joe Biden. It led to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bobert trading insults on the floor of the House, competing bills that included allegations that Biden was responsible for an international child trafficking ring, and Republican leaders were trying even more desperate to find a way to avoid defending, yet again, the painful nonsense and delusional nonsense spewed out by his most powerful caucus member.
Bobert and Greene’s struggle to clash over the weirdness of their call for Biden’s impeachment came just a week after Rep. Bob Goode called for an impeachment of FBI Director Christopher Wray, which came a week after Republicans tried, and failedto hold Wray in contempt of Congress, and a month later by Greene earlier attempt to impeach Wray, who was nominated by Donald Trump, for turning the FBI into “a federal police force to intimidate, harass and entrap American citizens deemed enemies of the Biden regime.” This all revolved around the House’s decision to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (and boost your senatorial campaign) because … reasons. Not GOOD the reasons. Just reasons.
Barely now President Kevin McCarthy seems to have picked a target to satisfy his members’ bloodlust for impeachment, if he could only find a crime.
As The hill reports, McCarthy has proposed that the Republican demand for a human sacrifice might find its ceremonial victim in Attorney General Merrick Garland, but impeachment has that pesky requirement for “high felonies” which means McCarthy needs more than a name, he needs a justification before he can start preparing for the vote.
So what does he have?
McCarthy wants to impeach Garland because a ‘whistleblower’, apparently from the IRS, claims to have knowledge of a private WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden tried to extort money from a Chinese businessman . This whistleblower also accused the Justice Department of giving Hunter Biden “preferential treatment” during a review of his taxes.
“If the whistleblower allegations are true, it will be an important part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland’s weaponization of the DOJ,” McCarthy said.
Sadly, for all the times the Republicans have thrown it around, there is no such crime as “arming the DOJ” or the FBI or any other department. It is certainly true that these departments can and have been for individuals – see Martin Luther King Jr. and just about anyone who has ever offended J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon – but impeachment requires a crime, not a buzzword.
They need to find evidence that Garland did something like intervene to quell evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Hunter Biden. This could be difficult given that US Attorney David Weiss has just completed a five-year investigation into Hunter Biden that resulted in two minor charges of late tax payments and a charge of possession of a firearm while consuming drugs.
Weiss was appointed to the task by then-Attorney General William Barr, and the first two years of the investigation were conducted under Donald Trump. If there’s anything unusual about the accusations, it’s that Biden is charged at allbecause these are fees that are very rarely applied.
McCarthy admits there are “obvious disparities” between what Weiss found and the unsubstantiated reports Republicans are brandishing in their fundraising campaigns. He demands that Weiss return to the House and explain the issues. Garland said he would be happy for Weiss to make such an appearance and discuss any issues with the IRS.
While he’s at it, maybe Weiss can explain how the reported attempt to extort a Chinese billionaire happened in 2017 when President Joe Biden was no longer vice president, was no longer in the Senate and didn’t show up for anything. As Garland Explained On Friday, Weiss had full authority to prosecute any evidence he found, including “more authority than a special advocate would have had.” He also noted that the IRS whistleblower claimed that Weiss had no right to see evidence outside of Delaware, which was untrue.
Although McCarthy has Weiss in the House, he could also ask a few questions about why the last ‘key informant’ the Republicans claimed to have, who also launched unsubstantiated claims about Hunter Biden, turns out to be dead. . And the guy who was at the center of this supposed deal turns out to have dead in three years before Hunter Biden got involved.
Of course, the requirement for McCarthy to produce a felony on which to base impeachment is only what is in the Constitution and the law. No big deal for this crew. Republicans can draft an impeachment because they don’t like Garland’s tie motive and will likely find a majority to pass it.
Donald Trump has been indicted twice for overt crimes. He was first impeached for trying to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into providing false evidence against then-candidate Joe Biden. This effort not only caused delays in military assistance to Ukraine, it sent a clear signal that the United States was not interested in stopping corruption. He was interested in provoking Corruption.
Trump’s second impeachment came from his involvement in the January 6 events. Trump not only provided systematically false statements about the 2020 election, but he incited violence and delayed assistance needed to protect members of Congress and Capitol police.
Republicans want to impeach someone, anyone, in order to get revenge on Trump. This includes McCarthy expressing his support for striking out both Trump impeachments. All they do is show their support for Trump and show Trump supporters how willing they are to punch anyone who opposes him.
But this chart from last week shows their core problem.
It’s not that Republicans don’t have plenty of opportunities to investigate their opponents. It’s that the Republicans keep doing all the crimes. Whether it’s a special advocate or a U.S. attorney, years of investigations into Joe Biden and Hunter Biden have uncovered no grand conspiracy or serious crime. But just a few months of investigation into Trump revealed crimes by the dozens.
For this, the Republicans want to prosecute the investigators. Maybe their “tough on crime” theme would work better if it was actually aimed at criminals. Like Trump.
