Biden's Impeachment Inquiry Is Not Only Unwarranted, It's a Political Fail for Republicans | Opinion

Speaker Kevin McCarthy may not have hair dye slowly dripping down his face like Rudy Giuliani, but he is in deep trouble and sweating just as much. McCarthy is desperately trying to use a baseless unwarranted impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden to cling to power. While we know any attempt to call him out as the coward that he is will not stop him from moving forward with this transparent and transactional attempt to keep the gavel, he should know that it will backfire.

His speakership was won—after 15 agonizing rounds—by sealing a corrupt bargain with MAGA extremists who ensured they would have functional control of the House in exchange for their votes to let McCarthy sit in the big boy chair, bang a gavel, and pretend to be in charge. The bill is now coming due.

Just as MAGA called for hanging former Vice President Mike Pence after he spent years bending the knee to former President Donald Trump, extremists in the House caucus are now threatening to remove McCarthy from power unless he moves faster on their demands. These demands include impeaching Biden and shutting down the government to get the spending cuts and the policy changes they demand. This would severely hurt the economy and go against what the American people want.

In order to appease his extremist members, McCarthy unilaterally declared they were opening an impeachment inquiry, breaking his promise from less than two weeks ago that there would be an up or down vote on impeachment.

But McCarthy had to skip holding a vote on impeachment because their investigations to this point have been such a failure that up to 30 members of his own caucus don't think there is enough evidence to move forward. Many of these members do not want to take a vote on a flimsy impeachment attempt because their seats are in districts won by President Biden and their vulnerability is undeniably tied to this vote.

Those 30 Republican members of McCarthy's caucus are right. Facts First, the bipartisan organization we co-chair, recently released a report ahead of the last Republican primary debate comprehensively outlining how Representative James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have nothing except lies and conspiracies to throw at the wall. Nothing is sticking.

If Americans are having an odd sense of déjà vu about these baseless attacks against the Biden family, it is because we have been here before. They are the same conspiracy theories that Trump used to try and blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into validating. They are the same lies that Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon have spent years blathering about and yet have had zero luck in validating.

Despite the lack of evidence, the Trump administration began an investigation into these allegations, hoping to find concrete connections between the president's son, Hunter Biden, and wrongdoing tied to his father while he was vice president. It dragged on for five years and in the end found nothing except minor tax and firearms violations that would have never been charged if Hunter's last name wasn't Biden.

But a Trump appointed attorney general, FBI director, and U.S. attorney finding nothing credible wasn't going to stop Jordan and Comer from continuing the partisan witch hunt in service of their true goal to hurt President Biden's re-election chances and help Trump back into the Oval Office. Jordan proudly told CPAC this was his plan back in August 2022, even before the election and Comer said the same thing a few months ago.

And just as the other MAGA extremists failed before them, Comer and Jordan have faceplanted into an embarrassing morass of old and debunked allegations, being contradicted by their own witnesses, and called out continuously by reporters and fact-checkers for lying. It has gotten so bad that their investigations are being criticized by Republicans in the House and Senate and Comer and Jordan have repeatedly been grilled, even by Fox hosts for not finding any actual evidence.

Those of you who may be just slightly younger than us might not recall how insane the impeachment attacks on former President Bill Clinton got, including former Representative Dan Burton (R-Ind.) shooting watermelons in his backyard to try and prove the Clintons murdered someone.

Comer and Jordan are proudly following in Burton's footsteps by trotting out some so called witnesses or whistleblowers who have faced their own disciplinary charges, including being supportive of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

Let's be truly clear eyed that none of this is going to stop MAGA from continuing to baselessly attack the Biden family. Trump has given House Republicans their marching orders to impeach Biden and nothing will stop them or right-wing media from doing everything they can to try and hurt Biden heading into 2024.

President Biden has the truth on his side thus far, and Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and committee Democrats have done yeoman's work in rebutting the lies and laying out the facts. President Biden also has a strong record of historic accomplishments that are helping the American people by creating a record number of jobs, lowering prescription drug prices, capping insulin at $35, bringing back manufacturing jobs, fighting the climate crisis, investing in veterans, and fighting inflation.

In the end, this partisan and baseless impeachment will blow back politically on McCarthy and MAGA extremists just like it did to Newt Gingrich and House Republicans when they impeached Clinton. This current, and even more misguided impeachment attempt will serve to motivate the Democratic base and remind independents and moderate Republicans that GOP leaders who owe their power to the extremists cannot be trusted to govern. You can't learn from history, facts, or truth if you don't believe in any of the three.

David Jolly is a former Republican congressman from Florida, and Maria Cardona is a long-time Democratic strategist and former Democratic Party spokesperson. They are both political commentators on television, and together co-chair Facts First USA, a nonprofit bipartisan organization dedicated to ensuring our national discourse is grounded in facts and honest debate.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.