The first time a member of the House introduced articles of impeachment targeting President Biden, he had held that title for about 24 hours.
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“Joseph R. Biden,” the resolution concluded, “threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coordinate branch of government.” That gives the game away, really. Greene’s effort was less about what Biden did than that the Democratic House had a week prior impeached Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Should this domino eventually lead to Biden’s removal from office, all the better.
In the three-plus years since that resolution (which went nowhere), 14 other articles of impeachment have been introduced against Biden. They present, as the requisite “high crimes and misdemeanors,” that he allegedly:
- Extended a pandemic moratorium on evictions (introduced by Greene in August 2021).
- Allowed immigrants to enter the country while infected with the coronavirus (Greene again, on the same day).
- Withdrew from Afghanistan (Greene, still on the same day; Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), the following month; and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) in 2022).
- Promoted a false sense of how the war in Afghanistan was going (from Rep. Randy Weber (R-Tex.) in September 2021).
- Didn’t keep building the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border (Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) later that month).
- Failed to secure the border (Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) in April 2022 and May 2023, Boebert in June 2023 and … guess who, May 2023).
- Sold oil from the petroleum reserve (guess who, September 2022).
- Failed to provide information to Congress including an FBI interview form (Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) in June 2023).
- Was financially involved in “drug and prostitution activities” (Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) in August 2023).
Many of those include multiple allegations, mind you. The border ones, for example, bounce from the wall to rescinding executive orders implemented by Trump to simply abdicating his authority. The ones linked to Hunter Biden (like the last one on that list) generally loop in various elements of the evolving claims presented by Republicans over the course of the past two years.
It’s worth remembering that members of the House have broad protections against defamatory speech.
Despite all of this, there has been only one impeachment push that has been blessed by the House Republican leadership. As then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was trying (and ultimately failing) to retain his leadership position last year, he announced that he was authorizing a formal impeachment inquiry, one that would dig into several of the more common (and, to Republican eyes, promising) allegations against Biden.
As he articulated last September, those allegedly included:
- Lying to the public about his son’s business dealings.
- Being on the phone with his son while his son was having business meetings.
- Being a member of a family that earned lots of money from non-American business partners.
- Being accused of having taken a bribe.
- Having his vice-presidential office coordinate with his son’s business partners.
- Having his administration give his family members “special treatment.”
Over the seven-plus months since McCarthy made this announcement, the effort to prove that Biden committed impeachable offenses along the above lines has fallen flat. The bribery thing blew up in Republicans’ faces when the person who made the allegation was arrested on a charge of lying to the FBI about it. The phone calls and money earned by Biden’s family were never linked to any action Biden took, nor was he shown to have benefited. The coordination, meanwhile, was an exchange centered on answering questions from a reporter.
Probably the last four months of those seven-plus months have been focused less on proving that Biden did something worthy of impeachment and more on trying to figure out how to save face. That effort is still ongoing.
With all of that background, then, we come to a new development Thursday. Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) announced that he would introduce an impeachment resolution targeting Biden for allegedly engaging in quid pro quo after withholding aid to Israel. Mills’s resolution attempts to draw a comparison between that decision and Trump’s withholding aid to Ukraine, the trigger for his first impeachment. The difference, of course, is that Trump withheld aid in an effort to get Ukraine to make an announcement aiding his reelection.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) appeared on Fox Business, where he was asked about the idea. Host Stuart Varney asked if Biden’s decision was a high crime and misdemeanor; Scalise didn’t answer directly.
A different guest, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Tex.), suggested it was.
“A high crime and misdemeanor would be to turn our backs on a country that we have supported for decades,” Hunt said.
Varney seemed skeptical. They both laughed. Who says politics can't be fun?
Given how narrow the Republican majority in the House is, it was always risky for the caucus to put forward articles of impeachment, even had they compiled more than zero evidence warranting it. There was no chance that the Senate Democratic majority would remove Biden from office. At this point, the most likely mechanism for removing Biden will be to have him lose his reelection bid.
But the impeachment efforts nonetheless proceed apace. With eight months until the January 2025 inauguration, Greene can probably knock out another six articles herself.
