Even Mike Johnson Doesn’t Want to Talk About Biden Impeachment Anymore
House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be growing cold on the idea of impeaching Joe Biden, as Republicans reportedly scramble for the exits regarding the impeachment investigation.
Despite insisting for more than a year that the president and his family are guilty of corruption, House Republicans have quietly begun looking for an off-ramp. Their investigation has produced no evidence of Biden’s involvement in crimes, and with their rapidly shrinking majority, articles of impeachment would be unlikely to pass anyway.
When asked Wednesday whether he would hold a vote on articles of impeachment, Johnson demurred and instead said there was more investigating to be done.
“The impeachment inquiry and the investigation that accompanies that will continue,” he told reporters. “There is still bits of information that have been requested that have not yet been turned over, and our committees will continue to do that work. And they will process all of that and make those decisions as they come forward.”
Later, Johnson said that once the investigators receive that information, “we’ll carefully evaluate that and make a decision as a body, as a leadership team, about where we proceed from there.”
Johnson’s refusal to give a clear answer is a significant shift, considering he has previously steadfastly supported House Republicans’ impeachment efforts. But lately, the impeachment inquiry has foundered.
The lengthy investigation has failed to turn up any proof of the president’s wrongdoing. In fact, the biggest criminal act revealed during the course of the probe was committed by the GOP’s own star witness, Alexander Smirnov. The Department of Justice has accused him of making up the allegations against the Biden family that jump-started the whole impeachment effort.
Republicans have begun to express doubt that articles of impeachment will ever make it to the floor, and even House Oversight Chair James Comer, who spearheaded the charge against the Biden family, has changed his tune. Last week, Comer told Fox News he would be satisfied with simply making nonbinding criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.
And even if Johnson did bring articles of impeachment to the floor, the likelihood that they would pass seems to shrink with every passing day. Colorado Representative Ken Buck announced Tuesday that he would leave Congress in a matter of days. Buck cited the impeachment inquiry as one of the main reasons he was leaving the House, calling it “dysfunctional” and saying the past year has been the worst of his nearly decade-long term in Washington.
“We’ve taken impeachment and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept,” Buck told reporters Tuesday. “This place just keeps going downhill, and I don’t need to spend my time here.”
Buck also hinted that more resignations will be coming, making it that much more difficult for Republicans to pass anything, let alone articles of impeachment.