Representative Matt Gaetz has finally said the quiet part out loud: Republicans don’t have enough evidence to impeach and convict Joe Biden. They just want to make him look bad enough that he loses the 2024 election.
Republicans have insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, despite producing no actual evidence. Many in the GOP, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are starting to suggest opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden so that they can access more information and witnesses that will supposedly lead them to the truth.
But Gaetz said that Republicans should go straight to impeachment proceedings, not just an inquiry. “The purpose of that impeachment, from my standpoint, is not to force a vote that loses,” he said during a Twitter Space on Monday night. “It’s to put on a trial in the Senate, and by the way, not for the sake of conviction.”
“There’s no conviction and removal of Joe Biden coming on impeachment. I know that. You know that,” Gaetz said, although he blamed that on the Senate being controlled by Democrats, not the utter lack of proof.
Gaetz argued that Republicans should impeach Biden in order to put him on trial. But “the jury is the American people.”
“If we had the Senate as the stage and the platform for James Comer to put on his evidence and advance this impeachment, it will not result in a conviction,” Gaetz said, referring to the chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has been leading the charge against Biden.
“But the true verdict can still be rendered by the American people.”
Republicans are reportedly planning to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden in the fall. McCarthy insisted that such an inquiry would not be for political purposes, a pointed dig at the president, whom Republicans accuse of weaponizing the government to go after Donald Trump.
But all of the investigations into Biden are absolutely for political purposes. House Republicans have mobilized multiple committees to go after the Biden family. There has yet to be any proof of wrongdoing, but Republicans have used the investigations as excuses to trash Biden, attack policies they don’t like such as immigration, and share his son’s nude photos.
An impeachment inquiry, and certainly a full-on impeachment, would take that governmental weaponization to the next level.