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.
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