Trump wants to see Biden impeached, and other Republicans are quick to pile on
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump wants to see President Joe Biden impeached, and the former president’s allies in Congress and his 2024 GOP presidential rivals are eager to join that fight as his own legal challenges mount.
Trump’s chief opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, this week said the House Republicans “are absolutely within their rights” to consider an impeachment inquiry against Biden. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, also running for president, said Republicans would be “justified to do it.” And House GOP leaders aligned with Trump are foreshadowing what’s ahead.
“House Republicans will leave no stone unturned,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth-ranking House GOP leader and a top Trump ally, who is sometimes mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick.
This week, the prospect of impeaching Biden over the business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden, emerged from the far corners of the GOP’s right flank to the mainstream in the Republican Party.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Fox News that the House may open an impeachment inquiry into Biden, and expanded on his plans at a Tuesday press event at the Capitol.
Behind closed doors Wednesday, however, the Republican speaker told GOP colleagues it’s early in the impeachment process, and McCarthy acknowledged there’s still much that is unknown about Joe Biden and whether he had any awareness or involvement in his son’s business deals that would arise to an impeachable offense.
“The speaker went through what we know and what we don’t know,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a seasoned lawmaker and committee chairman.
“There’s a lot we don’t know — we don’t know if any money went directly to President Biden or not,” Cole said, explaining the message to the House GOP. “That’s what they do the investigations about.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said McCarthy also told them if it comes to a Biden impeachment inquiry, he’s going to ask that “you be with me on this.”
Greene, a Trump ally backing impeachment, said no one rose during the private meeting to object.
By putting Biden on notice that the House is considering an inquiry, the Republicans are elevating a once rare congressional check on executive power — the formal impeachment charges over high crimes and misdemeanors — into yet another tool being wielded in party politics.
It’s a political escalation, urged on by Trump, after his own two impeachments.
The prospect of a Biden impeachment inquiry also comes as Trump faces mounting legal cases, including a potential federal indictment in the investigation led by Special Counsel Jack Smith over his efforts to overturn the election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Trump is the only president in U.S. history that has been twice impeached — first in 2019 over his phone call urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on the Bidens or risk losing U.S. military aid, and again in 2021 in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn Biden’s election.
Now, as the Republican party’s frontrunner for the nomination to take on Biden in 2024, Trump has long seethed over his impeachments at the hands of House Democrats. McCarthy has suggested the Trump impeachments could be expunged, as proposed by Stefanik and Greene. But Trump wants Biden to face similar impeachment charges.
“They impeach me over a ‘perfect’ phone call, and they don’t impeach Biden,” Trump posted online in capital letters this week, calling the current president “corrupt.”
