Biden impeachment inquiry is a cynical Republican ploy

It appears as though Republicans are determined to impeach Joe Biden, even if they don’t find any evidence linking him to high crimes or misdemeanors, certainly not to crimes of any kind. Let’s discuss this in a little bit of detail.

If you pay close attention, if you look at interviews with Republicans, Nancy Mace, Michael McCaul and others, James Comer, they will very broadly say, “We have a smoking gun. We have ledgers. We have transactions. We have photocopies of checks. We have circumstantial evidence. We have phone calls. We have text messages.”

And then when you say, “What’s the biggest smoking gun that links Joe Biden to any of it?”

They say, “Well, we don’t necessarily know that yet. They’ve been good at covering it up. We need an impeachment inquiry in order to figure that out.”

When you say, “What exactly are the crimes you believe Joe Biden has committed?”

They say, “We don’t actually know yet. But that’s what we’re trying to figure out with the impeachment inquiry.”

Now, increasingly, we are seeing different right wingers, media, senators, others admit there’s really no reason to go forward with this impeachment inquiry. In an ideal world where you aren’t dealing with hyper-partisan, crooked actors, you would say, “Well, we’re going to find evidence. Once we have the evidence, we will do an impeachment inquiry. If the impeachment inquiry points to the guilt of the president, then we will actually go forward and impeach, then we will have a trial in the Senate.” And depending on the results of the trial, either acquittal or conviction, the president would be removed or would not be removed. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Republicans have spun this on its head. The way they are doing it is they’re saying, “It is so obvious that the evidence we need is being covered up, that we need the subpoena power and investigative power of an impeachment inquiry in order to find the evidence that Joe Biden has done something wrong.”

Now some Republicans aren’t going for it. For example, Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney, a Republican senator who is retiring, he has no more races to run or whatever the case may be, he has said, “I haven’t seen any evidence linking Joe Biden to any of the wrongdoing. If I were to vote today in the House as to whether to move forward, I would vote not to move forward, because there is no such evidence.”

This is perfectly rational. This is perfectly sane. But it is rare today in the Republican Party. Fox News, increasingly, has seen many of its hosts, including Steve Doocy, his son, Peter Doocy, and some others, just be upfront and say they’ve got ledgers, checks and text messages, but they don’t even have evidence that a crime was committed. Nevermind that Joe Biden committed that crime.

Now if all of this seems blurry or nebulous to you, it’s for good reason: It’s because we don’t know what the hell is their argument about what Joe Biden did wrong. One line of argument that they try to make, and there’s no evidence of any of these, is that Joe Biden made policy decisions, either or both as Obama’s Vice President and as President, to benefit Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Which policy decisions did he make? They don’t know. Maria Bartiromo on her Fox News show asked a Republican member of the House about this. They said, “Well, we don’t know yet. But we think he might have done it.” That’s one argument.

Second argument: That Joe Biden personally was getting cash payoffs for helping Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Their evidence is checks written to Joe Biden, from his brother and from his son, Hunter Biden, which have already been explained as being the repayment of loans that Joe Biden gave to members of his family. So that one has fallen by the wayside.

In terms of it’s criminal, and it was illegal, as I already said, when you ask them, “What are the crimes?” They don’t know. They say they need to do the impeachment inquiry in order to figure it out.

So, where we are very quickly getting to as we approach 2024, and sort of the heat of this election, is that Republicans seem determined to try to make it seem as though you have choices between two candidates, both of whom have been impeached. This is Eric Swalwell’s theory, he was on my program a few weeks ago. He said he believes Republicans know that, given a rematch between Trump and Biden in ‘24, Trump impeached twice and under criminal indictment for 91 alleged crimes, Biden not impeached [and] not under indictment, that is really bad for Donald Trump. So, Eric Swalwell’s supposition is they want to get an impeachment of Biden on the record, even if it’s bogus, they want to get an indictment of Biden somehow to be done even if it’s bogus, even if it goes nowhere, so that when voters go to the polls, it’ll be okay. Both candidates have been indicted. Both candidates have been impeached. That zeroes it out as a voting factor. This is the idea of why Republicans seemed determined to go forward with this without any evidence. So the way I leave it to you is: Do you believe that, even if they find no evidence, that they are going forward with the impeachment of Joe Biden? Let me know what you think.