House Republicans eye Wednesday vote to approve impeachment inquiry into Biden

Table Of Content

• House Republicans eye Wednesday vote to approve impeachment inquiry into Biden
• 'Surprising' and 'disturbing': Legal experts react to SCOTUS on Trump immunity case
• Trial will have a 'Wild West' feeling with no strict process
• Trump Makes His Final Case To Supreme Court To Avoid Prosecution For His Coup Attempt
• ‘It is never too late to do the right thing.’ Read key quotes from Democrats and Republicans on impeachment.
• Support our journalism

"It’s time for Congressional Republicans to support the Department’s vital mission instead of wasting time playing political games and standing in the way of commonsense, bipartisan border reforms," she said. Johnson's public opponents are few, at this point, and less than the eight that it took to oust now-former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last fall in the first ever removal of sitting speaker from the powerful office that is second in the line of succession to the president. Just one other Republican, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, has joined Greene's effort. The standoff with Greene, one of Trump's most enthusiastic supporters, risks throwing Republican control of the House into a fresh round of chaos as rank-and-file lawmakers will have to choose between ousting Johnson, R-La., as speaker or joining with Democrats to keep him on the job. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming — the No. 3 House Republican — had announced the day before that she would vote to impeach, calling it a “vote of conscience” and placing the blame for the attack squarely on the President. Each of the past four GOP speakers—John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Mike Johnson—faced the ever-present threat of defenestration at the hands of conservative hard-liners.

House Republicans eye Wednesday vote to approve impeachment inquiry into Biden

There was a small possibility the vote could take place this week, but Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., both said the vote — if it happens — would occur “next week” as the leaders left a closed-door meeting of House Republicans. Senate Democrats hope to quickly dismiss the House’s articles of impeachment against Mayorkas this week and move on to other matters. House Republicans muscled through a vote to impeach Mayorkas over his handling of the border on Feb. 13, exactly one week after their first attempt to impeach him collapsed spectacularly on the floor. While it has been 148 years since the last successful impeachment of a Cabinet member, there have been several failed attempts in that time. Opening an impeachment investigation into a Cabinet member of the opposing party has become especially common in the past two decades.

'Surprising' and 'disturbing': Legal experts react to SCOTUS on Trump immunity case

The new comments come as leaders have projected growing confidence that they have the votes to officially launch the impeachment investigation. A handful of vulnerable moderates who previously had expressed strong reservations about an impeachment inquiry now say they support it due to the White House’s intransigence. On Sept. 12, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy unilaterally launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden over his family’s business dealings after Republicans, with their thin majority, conceded they didn’t have the votes to pass it on the floor. WASHINGTON — Republican leaders said Tuesday the House will likely vote to formalize their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden next week — the last week the chamber is scheduled to be in session before lawmakers leave for the holidays. WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House will vote next week on formally authorizing its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday, asserting Republicans have “no choice” but to push ahead as the White House has rebuffed their requests for information. Romney wouldn’t say whether he’d support a vote to table or dismiss the impeachment articles from the outset of the trial, saying he wanted to look at the legal process.

Trial will have a 'Wild West' feeling with no strict process

“The House has no choice if it’s going to follow its constitutional responsibility to formally adopt an impeachment inquiry on the floor so that when the subpoenas are challenged in court, we will be at the apex of our constitutional authority,” Johnson told reporters. Johnson and the rest of the Republican leadership team had been contemplating in recent weeks whether to hold a formal vote on their monthslong inquiry into the president, which has centered on the business dealings of other family members. Their investigation so far has yet to produce any direct evidence of wrongdoing by Biden himself. Johnson and the rest of the Republican leadership team had been contemplating in recent weeks whether to hold a formal vote on their monthslong inquiry into the president, which has centered on the business dealings of other family members. The decision to hold a vote came as House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden’s family members.

Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president’s son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs. Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership’s recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.

House GOP Moves Toward Formalizing Impeachment Probe of Biden - The Wall Street Journal

House GOP Moves Toward Formalizing Impeachment Probe of Biden.

Posted: Sun, 03 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

“The Senate must hold a full impeachment trial of Secretary Mayorkas, or at the very least, refer the articles to an impeachment committee," Schmitt said. Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, were spotted speaking with Murkowski during the quorum call earlier. Murkowski has never shared how she plans to vote on a possible motion to dismiss or table the articles with reporters. Tester is up for re-election in red Montana in November and voted with all other Democrats to dismiss the impeachment articles against Mayorkas.

Committee Information

The Senate trial began in April and featured testimony from 40 witnesses. While a majority of senators voted against Belknap on all five articles, the Senate didn’t reach the two-thirds threshold necessary for conviction on any of them. The House voted to impeach President Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection, exactly one week after a mob attacked the Capitol, where lawmakers were convening to approve President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. Democrats were then in no mood to bail out McCarthy, who had turned to them for help keeping the government open but only weeks earlier had tried to hold on to his job by green-lighting an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. McCarthy spared the Republican lawmakers from having to take a vote to launch the impeachment investigation, a likely signal he didn’t have the votes to succeed.

But he went a different route this week and launched the probe unilaterally, though it’s possible he could seek a vote later on. The maneuver shielded the Republicans in swing districts from having to cast that vote to start an impeachment investigation, though many said they would have voted yes. The freshmen lawmaker, along with other likely holdouts like Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., were offered private briefings from leadership this week in order to assuage any concerns they had about moving forward with an inquiry. "My vote to impeach our sitting president is not a fear-based decision. I am not choosing a side; I am choosing truth," one of those Republicans, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, said on the House floor before Wednesday's vote. The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives delivered the historic rebuke to Trump on Wednesday afternoon — exactly one week after his supporters stormed the U.S.

House Republicans lost five seats in the 1998 election a few weeks before impeaching President Bill Clinton. Democrats made those surprising gains even though the party that controls the White House usually struggles in midterm elections. The impeachment inquiry vote will present a political challenge for many of the 17 Republicans in districts that Biden won. Several of them, along with other center-right GOP lawmakers, have been skeptical about proceeding with an inquiry. Before the floor vote, the resolution to authorize the inquiry is set to go before the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, even as the GOP has failed to come up with direct evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.

Mr. Kinzinger hasn’t formally announced a 2022 re-election bid, and the Illinois legislature, controlled by Democrats, is likely to redraw his district to make it more difficult for a Republican to win. WASHINGTON — When Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio looked into his political future, he saw a brutal primary contest against a Trump-backed opponent for the chance to return to a Trump-dominated House Republican caucus. Both Senate and House Republicans are harrumphing that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, and his fellow Senate Democrats, set a terrible precedent by dumping the impeachment case against Mayorkas without a full trial. Congressman Johnson is the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference, a member of the House Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, and a former constitutional law litigator. At HuffPost, we believe that everyone needs high-quality journalism, but we understand that not everyone can afford to pay for expensive news subscriptions.

“History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games,” he said in a statement. Senators will remain in their seats for the trial and will vote from their seats. They must lock up their phones in their respective party cloakrooms during the trial. Republicans, however, are expected to object to this, and then the Senate will enter an unstructured process, where Schumer would likely move to immediately table one of the articles. After a floor debate over whether the House could impeach an official who had resigned, the House ended up doing just that by voting unanimously to impeach Belknap. “THE DISGRACED SECRETARY,” read The New York Times headline the following day.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday named nine Democrats as managers of the impeachment trial of President Trump on charges of inciting a violent mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol, where rioters ransacked the seat of American government and killed a Capitol Police officer. The House adopted a single article of impeachment, voting 232 to 197 to charge Mr. Trump with “inciting violence against the government of the United States” and requesting his immediate removal from office and disqualification from ever holding one again. The impeachment inquiry is looking into whether Biden improperly used his position of power to enrich himself and his family, whether he used his influence to pressure the Department of Justice to help his son Hunter Biden, and how involved he was in his family’s foreign business dealings. With approval from the House, Republicans are pushing to strengthen their legal standing in court. While the White House has criticized GOP efforts as politicized, it has also gone so far as to dismiss some subpoenas.

He alleged this week that the White House has been "stonewalling" Republicans' impeachment inquiry so a vote on the resolution to authorize has become "a necessary constitutional step." The first accuses him of “willfully and systemically” refusing to comply with federal immigration laws leading to “millions” entering the U.S. illegally. The second article says Mayorkas “breached the public trust” by making false statements to Congress and knowingly obstructing congressional oversight of the Homeland Security Department.

The resolution was filed by Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), and will be marked up on Tuesday, Dec. 12, teeing up a likely vote on Wednesday. A person familiar with the arrangement said Hunter Biden sent around $4,000 to his father in three installments to repay him for car payments on a Ford Raptor truck, which the Daily Mail reported in 2021. Despite Comer's tightly choreographed rollout -- complete with a video monologue in which he describes the finding as further evidence of "blatant corruption" by the Biden family -- the committee released few details.

"For the sake of the Senate's integrity, and to protect impeachment for those rare cases we truly need it, senators should dismiss today's charges," he said on the floor. Talks to get an agreement on how long senators will debate the impeachment and a deal on a number of votes on points of order were blocked last night after Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., objected to the proposal, a Senate source said. Chief Justice John Roberts will not preside over the impeachment trial — that’s only for sitting presidents. Because Mayorkas is a Cabinet member, Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray, D-Wash., will preside. In January 2021, 45 Senate Republicans voted to dismiss Donald Trump’s Jan. 6-related impeachment without a trial. That trial only occurred because they lacked the majority vote needed to block it, with five Republicans joining all Democrats against dismissing it.

“She is a legislative arsonist, and she is holding the gas tank,” Aguilar said. “We don’t need to be a part of that.” Democrats won’t have to affirmatively vote for Johnson in order to save him; they plan to vote alongside most Republicans to table a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair should Greene bring one to the floor, as she has promised to do. "They're refusing to turn over key witnesses to allow them to testify as they've been subpoenaed," Johnson claimed of the Biden administration. “As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday. Republicans had planned to force Democrats to take tough votes, like on the constitutionality of not holding a trial.