Impeachment Proceedings Are the GOP’s Newest Shame

Speaker Mike Johnson has succumbed to MAGA pressure to pave the way for the House GOP's sham impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

Left to Right: Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images, Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images.

In recent remarks on the Fox Network, Speaker Mike Johnson signaled that he now believes that a formal impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden is a “necessary step.” This is quite a reversal from a few weeks ago, when Johnson admitted that such an inquiry lacked sufficient evidence to proceed.

What’s behind the change of heart? Certainly not any new evidence. Indeed, mainstream media, which has been covering the impeachment drama non-stop, is in agreement that Republicans still have produced no evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

Instead, the about-face appears to be a consequence of intense MAGA backlash. Speaker Johnson had expressed initial hesitancy over any impeachment proceedings. So, far-right extremists accused Johnson of being no better than his predecessor at bringing the fight to the Democrats. They wanted payback for Trump’s two impeachments, no matter what.

Facts and evidence don’t really matter to MAGA extremists here. It’s been clear from the get-go that the whole point of impeaching Biden is so Donald Trump won’t be the only party nominee impeached by Congress. That’s why Trump’s allies in Congress, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), have been pressuring House leadership hard to move ahead with impeachment, evidence be damned. 

Now, Johnson is feeling the heat, and in order to stay in the good graces of the far-right, he needs to pull a Kevin McCarthy and go along with their demands. Johnson claims he has the votes to launch a formal inquiry, but with the recent expulsion of George Santos, and assuming all Democrats vote against it, he can’t lose more than three Republican House members or even the inquiry will fail to launch.

With a vote likely to take place before the December recess, now seems a good time to assess where things stand. What is the state of the investigation by Rep. James Comer and the House Oversight Committee? What has been the White House response? And what would a vote to begin an impeachment inquiry mean for our politics and for the election next year?

The state of the investigation is not good

One cannot survive on nothingburgers alone. Yet that’s what Rep. Comer expects the American public to consume.

First, it was his committee’s “star witness,” Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden whom the House Oversight Committee interviewed behind closed doors. Rather than support their unfounded claim that Joe Biden benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, Archer confirmed that he had no knowledge of any wrongdoing by the elder Biden. The testimony was so bad for the investigation that Comer himself didn’t even bother attending the hearing.

Then there was the hubbub around a loan that Joe Biden made to his brother in 2018, when Biden was not even a candidate or in public office, in the amount of $200,000. Here’s how CNN reported it:

Comer released a video raising questions about a 2018 personal check to Joe Biden from his brother James Biden and James’ wife Sara Biden, which had the words “loan repayment” written on the front. Comer said he would view the $200,000 check to Joe Biden as “troubling” even if it was a loan repayment, since it came on the same day that James Biden received $200,000 from a struggling health company he did business with.

From there, Comer hit the talk shows claiming he personally did not “believe” that Biden actually made a loan to his brother, as if that even matters. Democrats then produced evidence that Biden had in fact provided $200,000 to his brother, less than two months before this check was written. Comer charged in response that Democrats were “lying.” So CNN reviewed the banking records and concluded they support the Democrats’ position.

In the “you can’t make this up” department, there was also this hypocrisy to consider: Comer had also done a deal with his own brother in the amount of $218,000, and it was actually really shady. As The Daily Beast reported,

Chad Comer bought out his brother’s half of a piece of inherited Kentucky property, paying $100,000, according to deed records in Monroe County. Five months later, James and his wife, Tamara “TJ” Comer, bought the property out in full, this time paying Chad Comer $218,000. The buyout netted Chad Comer an unexplained $18,000 above the total value in July.

Lately, Comer has been going on about direct payments made from Hunter Biden’s lawyers to Joe Biden. To try and make this sound sinister, Comer pointed out that the same law firm accepted money on Hunter Biden’s behalf from Chinese state-linked companies. This allowed him to claim that Joe Biden was receiving direct payments from a company that accepted Chinese money. 

The Washington Post ran a headline that summed up this particular sleight of hand: “Comer mischaracterizes Hunter Biden car payment reimbursement to his dad.”

That’s right: The “direct payments” from Hunter’s lawyers were for a truck loan. As the Post noted,

The three payments of $1,380 that occurred in September, October and November 2018 — nearly two years after Biden had left the vice presidency — were actually for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck Joe Biden had purchased that Hunter Biden was using, according to an email verified by a Washington Post forensic analysis.

This spawned no shortage of derision, with Democrats wondering if Hunter Biden’s allowance and tooth fairy money would be next. Comer tried to justify his announcement, claiming that when his son or daughter needs help, he just gives them money, not a loan. Of course, the difference is that Comer’s children are still in grade school and junior high.

The White House responds

For a time, it seemed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy had no appetite to pursue an impeachment in the absence of evidence. But pressure from the MAGA wing of his party, in particular from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), won out, and McCarthy announced back in September that he would be directing Republicans to launch an impeachment inquiry after all.

At that point, the White House took a more aggressive stance, properly labeling the effort as “extreme politics at its worst.” After all, the Oversight Committee had been investigating for eight months and had produced no evidence whatsoever of any impeachable offenses. 

In mid-November, White House counsel rejected requests from the committee to interview members of Biden’s staff, his family, and a former senior aide. The White House claimed House Republicans were seeking merely to "boost" the numbers of subpoenas for the press, "rather than any legitimate investigative interest." It also accused GOP leaders of "harassment of the President to score political points." And it’s now clear that whatever innocent transactions there are—such as truck loans—will simply be spun by Comer and his committee into something out of context and nefarious sounding.

Speaker Johnson claims that the impeachment inquiry is now necessary because the White House won’t cooperate with their requests. But this is a pretense. After nearly a year of investigating, Comer has nothing to show for it, and the inquiry remains evidence-free. And cooperation has its limits: The White House can’t be expected to go along with every harassing request made, especially given the record so far.

Implications for our politics and the election

The GOP has also made it crystal clear that the very point of this whole exercise is to harm Biden, and not to get at the truth. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), for example, who is one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, said the quiet part out loud recently. Rep. Nehls stated that if the twice-impeached Trump does become the GOP presidential nominee, as is widely expected, he wants to give Trump “a bit of ammo to fire back” and say Biden has also been impeached.

But going after Joe Biden on a groundless impeachment inquiry is not necessarily a wise political move, even if it’s something Donald Trump would really like to see happen. If Biden has a weakness, it is in support from his own base, which if history is any guide will tend to rally around a president who is under unfair attack. The impeachments of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump actually improved their standing with their own bases of support, and the same likely would happen with Biden.

Moreover, Johnson and the MAGA folks pushing for an impeachment inquiry may not have played this through in their heads to its logical conclusion. At some point, if you have an impeachment inquiry, you’re going to have to have a vote. And that’s a lose/lose proposition for the GOP as well, assuming they still have zero evidence to back it up.

If the impeachment vote goes down to defeat, that will be a big win for Biden in an election year. Already, there are some skeptics within the GOP. For example, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who is an arch-conservative but isn’t seeking reelection, has expressed reservations over the lack of any evidence and is currently a “lean no” on the question of even an inquiry. If the inquiry produces nothing but more smoke and mirrors, he is a likely “no” vote to impeach. And the GOP can only afford two more before losing outright.

If the impeachment vote succeeds, it won’t change any reality on the ground. Biden will easily survive a trial in the Senate. And it will become a rallying point for Democrats whose candidate was unfairly targeted without a scintilla of evidence. Moreover, most of the “moderate” Republicans, including in the 18 swing districts that Biden won in 2020, will have had to vote to impeach a president who is popular in their own districts. That will open them up to attacks by Democrats running against them.

The loser in all of this, of course, is our political system. If the GOP weaponizes impeachment without any evidence to support it, then this trivializes the process and tarnishes any future impeachments as “just more politics.” In prior presidential impeachments, threatened or actual, there was at least an argument, based on evidence, of the commission of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” by the president. 

Here, by contrast, there is no evidence, and there will be none. That doesn’t seem to matter to the GOP, but it might and should matter to the American people and to our politics as a whole.