Impeach Joe Biden? What Kevin McCarthy Said On Fox News About The Prospect
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has some advice for his Republican colleagues if they are successful in regaining control of Congress after the midterms: do not impeach President Joe Biden, at least for political reasons.
On Sunday, McCarthy appeared on Fox News from Poland where he was leading a congressional delegation to raise support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. In the interview, McCarthy laid out his plans to initiate investigations into the Biden administration on a litany of issues, including questions about border security and foreign policy like the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Towards the end of the interview, host Maria Bartiromo broached the question of whether or not House Republicans would move to impeach Biden after Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said he thinks Biden has committed impeachable offenses.
McCarthy declined to endorse such a move.
"We believe in the rule of law, we aren't going to pick and choose just because someone has power," McCarthy said, before repeating his agenda points for a Republican Congress next year. "We are not going to use it for political purposes."
McCarthy said his stance was in contrast to Congressional Democrats, who he lashed out at for what he characterized as a selective and capricious use of impeachment against former President Donald Trump. Though he did not name the ex-president by name, Trump was twice impeached by Democrats only for him to be acquitted in a Republican-led Senate.
Impeachment involves bringing charges against a federal officer on misconduct allegations.
Since Biden entered office in January 2021, only one Republican member of the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has pushed articles of impeachment. Such efforts have failed to gain much traction.
In some ways, McCarthy has found himself in a situation parallel to that of fellow Californian and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi before Trump’s first impeachment process. For two years, Pelosi fended off and tapered calls to impeach from Democrats, arguing that it would be divisive without clear evidence of wrongdoing.
For his part, McCarthy has promised to pursue impeachment if the facts and circumstances warranted it, but declined to endorse current proposals to impeach Biden thrown around by firebrands in his caucus.
"Look, one thing we learned about what the Democrats did was that they used impeachment for political reasons," McCarthy elaborated to Bartiromo. "America has been through too much with people playing politics with the process of impeachment."
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