Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently pushed back against using impeachment inquiries as political leverage in an apparent signal for House Republicans to reconsider the proposal to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
McConnell remarked, “Impeachment ought to be rare.”
Highlighting the divisive nature of recent impeachment proceedings, the Kentucky senator said, “This is not good for the country.”
House Republicans appear poised to consider an impeachment inquiry against Biden as early as this fall over suspicious financial inflows from foreign nationals.
The most recent call for an impeachment inquiry is not the first time Republican lawmakers have introduced articles of impeachment. However, previous impeachment proposals by the GOP targeting Biden’s border decisions have not achieved significant support.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) emphasized last month the rising importance of examining the Biden family’s financial activities. In a recent Fox News interview, McCarthy highlighted how an impeachment inquiry “empowers Congress — Republicans and Democrats — within their subpoena to be able to get the answers they need.”
Yet, the Republican camp is not unanimous, according to The Daily Wire. While figures such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) openly endorse the impeachment inquiry, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) proposed a more measured approach. Paul asserted that any impeachment process should be underpinned by substantial evidence and genuine public support.
“If there’s going to be impeachment, let’s have quite a bit of evidence out there [so] that the American people are actually behind this,” Paul stated.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), also brushed off her GOP counterparts’ calls for an impeachment inquiry.
Pelosi recently declared, “We fully intend to take back the House next time so we don’t have to deal with the frivolity, the waste of time of the Congress for them to go down this path.”
Although the House can approve impeachment articles with a simple majority, the Senate, which is currently under a slim Democrat majority, requires a two-thirds vote to convict. This means that if impeachment articles against Biden proceed, multiple Democrat senators would need to support the conviction.
Only four federal impeachment cases have occurred in the 21st Century, two of which targeted former President Donald Trump during his administration. Despite being impeached twice by a Democrat-led House, the GOP-dominated Senate acquitted Trump on both occasions.
McConnell, reflecting on this recent history, commented, “I said two years ago, when we had not one but two impeachments, that once we go down this path it incentivizes the other side to do the same thing.”
This news article was partially created with the assistance of artificial intelligence and edited and fact-checked by a human editor.
