If you missed the big news, Speaker-for-now Mike Johnson and his MAGA House buddies voted earlier this week, presumably in joyful anticipation of their extended holiday recess, to officially launch an inquiry into impeaching Joe Biden.
I know.
You thought the House already had three — yes, count ’em, three — House committees and their staff members busily sifting through all the evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors supposedly committed by Biden.
It turns out, though, that these have been unofficial inquiries. That’s because you don’t generally get to the official part in matters of impeachment unless you’ve discovered a smoking gun or at least a lighted doobie.
And yet.
With no smoking gun — with, in fact, no actual evidence whatsoever of high crimes and/or misdemeanors on Biden’s part — House Republicans voted to make the inquiry official anyway because, well, they could. And that’s even though some of the Trump fanboys at Fox News have been forced to admit that, uh, we got nothin’.
So why the official inquiry? Let’s go with the two most obvious reasons. One, because Donald Trump wants it. Two, because Johnson and his team, who can’t seem to do much of anything else, including passing bills to aid an embattled ally fighting off the Russians, felt they had to do something to justify their phoney-baloney jobs.
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I wasn’t around for Andrew Johnson’s impeachment — although I did see the movie — but I’m pretty confident that there has never been a presidential-impeachment inquiry that felt less consequential to more people.
That’s probably because no one has any idea what this impeachment is even about —- unless, that is, you’re an eminent student of history like Colorado’s own Lauren Boebert, who has decided that Biden “is by far the most corrupt President in American history.” She didn’t say who was runner up.
What we’ve got here, in truth, is less an impeachment inquiry than it is a preview of the Trump Retribution Tour that the former guy has promised to undertake if the American people are, uh, slow-witted enough to elect him president again.
Here’s Trump on the topic from last March: “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today I add: I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution!”
He was your retribution even before he announced that, if elected, he’d also be your dictator for one day, just time enough, I’d guess, to invoke the Insurrection Act and round up all his enemies. But the retribution/vengeance concept is of a piece with much of what we’ve been hearing ever since Trump was dumped — yes, legally and officially — by voters in 2020.
To get a closer look at what is happening, we can turn to two Colorado representatives, who each in his own way has helped to define the moment.
Let’s begin with Ken Buck, who announced last month that he is retiring from office next year because of the GOP’s “Big Lie” that Biden had been illegitimately elected and because his party was “obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past,” not to mention pardoning the patriots who stormed the Capitol to help keep Trump in office.
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Buck had already written an op-ed in the Washington Post that Republicans who are determined to impeach Biden were “relying on an imagined history” and a “fictitious version” of events linking Joe Biden to his son Hunter’s “shady business deals.” He wrote that “impeachment is a serious matter and should have a foundation of rock-solid facts.”
So, how did Buck vote on the measure to launch an impeachment inquiry? Did he suddenly find some facts, rock solid or otherwise? Wasn’t he the one Republican who was expected to stand up against the impeachment circus?
I’m sure you’re ahead of me on this. Of course Buck voted yes — to start the inquiry. Even though he thinks a Biden impeachment is ridiculous. Even though he knows the whole process is meant to try to convince voters that the twice-impeached, many-times-indicted former president isn’t the only crook in town.
When asked by a CNN reporter why he then voted for the inquiry, Buck pointed to GOP Rep. Andy Biggs and joked, “He buttered me up.”
Funny, huh?
Yeah, funny like a Mike Johnson Bible school class.
I can only guess that Buck voted for the inquiry as a way of apologizing to his GOP pals for saying he could no longer stand to be in the same town with them.
So, now we move to Joe Neguse, who, like every other House Democrat, voted against the inquiry. That was easy enough to predict.
Neguse, who served as a prosecutor in Trump’s second impeachment trial, would explain that the House inquiry, led by Trump sycophants, was an “utter waste of time,” with its only objective being to help Trump “exact retribution” for his multiple impeachments.
Neguse comes by this opinion honestly. In a House Rules Committee hearing on authorizing the inquiry, Neguse had tried, and tried, to get Republicans to explain exactly why they wanted this inquiry.
Here’s an exchange between Neguse and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., which was funny enough that Stephen Colbert featured it in his monologue the other night:
Neguse: “What is the specific constitutional crime that you’re investigating?”
Reschenthaler: “Well, we’re having an inquiry so we can do an investigation to compel the production of witnesses and documents.”
Neguse: “And what is the crime you’re investigating?”
Reschenthaler: “High crimes, misdemeanors and bribery.”
Neguse: “What high crime and misdemeanors are you investigating?”
Reschenthaler: “Look, once I get time, I will explain what I’m looking at.”
There you have it. When Reschenthaler did have time, he offered up a couple of debunked theories about Joe Biden and Ukraine and some mumbo jumbo about Hunter Biden, who was at the time busily refusing to go along with a House subpoena because Republicans wouldn’t allow him to testify in public. You have any idea why they want Hunter Biden to testify only behind closed doors?
The thing is, if you ask around, you’ll find Republicans who will tell you the truth about the reason for the inquiry and for the possible impeachment that could follow. And they’ll do it without even a hint of embarrassment.
Take Texas Rep. Troy Nehls, who framed his impeachment-inquiry vote this way: “All I can say is Donald J. Trump 2024, baby.”
Yeah, baby.
You see, they don’t really think Biden is a crook. But they know that Trump is one. And a serial liar. And a business fraudster. And an assaulter of women. And all the rest. And they have to be worried that if Trump ever goes to trial on any of his 91 felony indictments, a jury of 12 good people tried and true just might make those obvious facts official.
So House Republicans have done what they can. And voting to formalize the longstanding, unproductive impeachment inquiry of Biden is about as official as they can hope to get.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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