The dictionary defines a farce as an empty or patently ridiculous act, proceeding or situation.
That is a perfect description of any effort to impeach President Joe Biden between now and the official end of his term in January.
Recently, Republican Congressman Byron Donalds urged House Republican leaders to hold a chamber-wide vote on impeaching President Biden. In doing so Donalds cited a recently released 292-page report from Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, House Judiciary Committee and House Ways and Means Committee. The report concludes there is overwhelming evidence that while serving as Vice President, Joe Biden participated in a conspiracy to enrich himself and his family.
Prdictably, White House staff immediately responded to Congressman Donald’s call for an impeachment vote with a strong rebuttal statement — “This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from, as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories.”
To date House Speaker Republican Mike Johnson has not given any indication on whether or not he will schedule a vote on any motion to impeach. I doubt he will.
Since I have yet to read that report, I will not offer an opinion on whether or not the evidence in that report is overwhelming and credible.
I will offer an opinion on the abuse of the impeachment process.
I am deeply concerned about the impeachment process being used to embarrass, harass, intimidate, or retaliate against any President while in office, or to preclude their eligibility to serve again.
I agree with House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, a Republican and long-time antagonist of Biden, who has said that criminal referrals could be the end of the road for this probe. He also said recently “the best path to accountability is criminal referrals.”
I suggest any impeachment effort against President Biden is not only an exercise in futility it will also exacerbate the already deep divisions in American society.
In terms of futility, the U.S. Senate has considered U.S. House impeachment articles for a sitting president four times in our history. Each time there were not the two-thirds votes in the Senate necessary to convict. That was the case with Andrew Johnson on eleven House impeachment articles in 1868; with Bill Clinton on two House impeachment articles in 1999; and with Donald Trump on two House impeachment articles in 2020 and another single impeachment article in 2021. This second impeachment occurred when Trump had less than one week until the end of his term.
If President Biden is impeached in the House, the Senate trial result, if there even is a trial, will certainly be an acquittal.
That said, intense debate on Joe Biden’s job performance during his one term as President, as well as his actions and the actions of his family during his previous two terms as Vice President, will likely go on long after he leaves office.
Regardless of the final outcomes on both of these debates topics, Biden’s legacy will include being on the short list of presidents since1927 who announced they would not be a candidate for reelection to a second term. They are Republican presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge; and Democratic presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson.
Going forward, Americans deserve and should demand the following actions from every member of Congress, especially those in leadership positions:
Hit the pause button on all future presidential impeachments unless there is bipartisan consensus to honor Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution which says, “The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
End the current practice as described by former Republican President and longtime member of the House Gerald Ford — “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
Change the House impeachment rules to require a two-thirds vote to approve all impeachment articles, consistent with Senate rules requiring a two-thirds vote to convict on those articles.
Let the historians and the voters decide a Vice Presidents or Presidents performance or lack of performance in the execution of their official duties while in office.
All of the above would result in future impeachment decisions more faithfully following the constitution remedy for removal from office, and barring from future offices envisioned by the authors of our constitution — impeachment should be a much more deliberative judicial process and much less a political process.
In a recent (August 2024) Gallup Poll, 76% of the American public expressed that they disapprove of the performance of Congress. That is nothing new. Not proceeding with a futile Biden impeachment is a small, but significant step in ending the farce that Presidential impeachments have been and will be going forward without meaningful changes to help ensure no political party should ever be able to use impeachment to advance a thinly disguised and divisive political agenda.
David Reel is a public affairs and public relations consultant who resides in Easton.
Michael L Pullen says
Donald Trump instigated an insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election, and his impeachment would have made him ineligible to hold public office in the future. Republicans in the Senate at the time acknowledged Trump’s culpability for the attempted overthrow of the election but voted to acquit because, by the time of their vote Trump’s term had ended. In effect, excusing Trump’s attempted overthrow of the government.
Comparing Trump’s attempted coup to the Republican attempt to impeach Biden is an utterly false comparison. In fact, there is no evidence Biden did anything even close to justifying the radical Republican congressmen Comer and Jordan’s partisan “investigation” that many other responsible Republicans disavowed from the outset.
It is also disingenuous to repeat the purported “findings” of this report as if they are legitimate, and not mere partisan political attacks, without having taken the time to read the report. Those who are familiar with the Republican Committee’s work and their report have almost uniformly recognized it for what it was, an unwarranted search in the dark for something that developed nothing.
Treating Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors as somehow equivalent to the Republican Congressmen’s efforts to smear Biden is part of the problem. Facts still matter. False comparison and false equivalency merely obscure the facts and create misimpressions.
William Keppen says
The only way you would ever get two-thirds of the House of Representatives to agree on anything would be to have three-quarters of the House controlled by one party or the under. Then it would would most certainly be a political process.
Stephen W. Fye says
The farce began with the impeachments of Trump and the DNC’s extensive lawfare. They just don’t want to understand that when Pandoras Box is opened….
Charles Barranco says
Mr Pullen,
You’re analysis is well written and well reasoned. Thank you.
Kent Robertson says
While I agree with your assessment that there is little chance that Biden would be convicted in the Senate, and therefore the impeachment process is not likely to provide any meaningful end to the accusations, I believe that the allegations should be investigated fully by a NONPARTISAN court. If it is shown that as alleged, the Biden family, and therefore President Biden himself, profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars by influence peddling, there should be severe consequences, both for President Biden and his family members. There is, I am certain, a lot of money that changes hands between other governments and corporations, and our government officials to influence policy. This is extremely dangerous and causes our country to act more like an oligarchy than a democracy. We have to get big money out of government in all its ugly forms if we want to trust our government to act in the best interests of the people. If the allegations against President Biden are found to be true, he is guilty of the worst kind of self-serving opportunism at the people’s expense. We deserve a real trial in a venue where both the prosecution and the defendant can get a fair trial. I have my doubts that this can even happen any more, with divisions so raw and deep, but we have to try. This should be extended to every elected official and every bureaucrat who abuses the power of his/her office.