Senate Republicans are worried that House Republicans moving forward without evidence in their impeachment push against President Biden will be seen as crying wolf.
The House isn’t too concerned with the fact that they haven’t even been able to sell manufactured or conflated “evidence” against Biden on TV, let alone in a setting where evidence is supposed to play the leading role, so they are charging ahead to impeach Biden over a jumble of lies, distortions, confabulations, fantasy, and storytelling. They’re moving ahead to formalize their impeachment inquiry before the break, without much concern for U.S. national security or other pressing issues.
Politico had a round-up of sentiment by Republican Senators:
“I think they’re a long way from coming to a conclusion there,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of Republican leadership. “I don’t see the grounds for this yet.”
“You’re not going to have this president impeached based on the evidence that we’ve seen come to light,” Senator Lisa Murkowsi (R-AK) told the outlet. “Impeachment used to be taken pretty seriously. It should be taken pretty seriously. It’s like the biggest consequence possible for a sitting president. Will it drag down the president as he goes into an election year? I don’t think that that’s good for any sitting president.”
Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT): “There may be of course evidence — I don’t know — but there’s been no evidence provided to the public yet or certainly to me to suggest an impeachment inquiry or impeachment itself is justified.”
And Senator Mike Rounds warned that House Republicans should make sure they have a strong case before they launch an inquiry, otherwise they could be seen as crying wolf:
“They should be able to make a strong case before they actually do an impeachment inquiry,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “Otherwise, what they can do is be seen as crying wolf, and that would hinder future abilities to actually get the job done.”
House Republicans have been indulging this fantasy for years and trying to make fetch happen, but every time they open their mouths to share their “breaking” report of proof, members of their own party and even some on Fox News point out that they do not have evidence. Speaker Johnson even said “that there is insufficient evidence to initiate formal impeachment proceedings” but then the nihilists running the show for Donald Trump got a hold of Johnson and he changed his tune.
Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) flat out said, “We don’t have the evidence.” Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) said “I haven’t seen evidence linking Hunter Biden’s activities to Joe Biden” and “I’m not convinced that that evidence exists.” Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) said, “You hear a lot of rumor and innuendo … but that’s not fact to me. As a former prosecutor, I think there has to be facts, and I think there has to be due process that we follow, and I’ve not seen any of that.”
Fox News host Bill Hemmer pointed out that after five years of hunting down something on Biden, they still have nothing. “It’s been five years, and what do we have for it?…Again, five years investigating. Nothing just yet.”
On Fox News, Neil Cavuto said after their first impeachment hearing (yes, they’ve already done the hearings to find evidence and found none), “None of the expert witnesses today presented, yet, any proof for impeachment… When you begin to trumpet what you have as the beginning of an explosive inquiry into the president of the United States to potentially remove him from office, you would think you would bring your A-game.”
A Republican strategist warned, “It’s stupid. It’s completely made up. They don’t have anything. This is not about impeachment for cause. This is a political stunt. And I have a feeling it’s going to go very badly for Republicans.”
On and on it goes.
While some Republicans are trying to argue that the inquiry is necessary to get the evidence, first of all an impeachment inquiry should be launched because there is evidence suggesting a serious infringement has taken place, not to find it, but also, Republicans have already gone over tens of thousands of documents and financial records. They’ve interviewed every witness they could imagine and then some. They’ve had a year of leadership to investigate and have already spent five years looking… and they have not found anything to justify an impeachment inquiry.
It all led to nothing but Marjorie Taylor Greene sharing naked, stolen photos of Hunter Biden in a House hearing, which critics have used to point out that for all of their accusations against drag queens “grooming” kids, Greene is the person who showed them naked revenge p@rn images on network TV.
You might think that House Republicans would want to pass some actual policy while they have the House, but they are focused on obstruction of Joe Biden and doing their best for Vladimir Putin while sticking it to Joe Biden by undermining U.S. foreign policy. Trolling a president is a full time job and it’s one that apparently their constituents are fine with paying for, at the expense of the cost of groceries, healthcare, gas, and other kitchen table issues that the GOP-led caucus might spend this time addressing before another vacation.
House Republicans will be accused of crying wolf, again, because that is what they are doing.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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