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Republicans furious with Boebert for forcing Biden impeachment vote

June 22, 2023 | | Print Article

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) is used to taking heat for her unapologetic “America First” approach to Congress, but this time the flames are being thrown by members of her own party after the lawmaker moved to force a vote to impeach President Joe Biden for his disastrous handling of the border crisis.

“Biden intentionally ceded command & control of our border to cartels. His dereliction of duty caused the deaths of over 900 Coloradans from fentanyl, enabled sex-trafficking, & allowed an invasion,” Boebert tweeted on Tuesday. “I brought my articles of impeachment up via a privileged motion to force a vote.”

The GOP, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), was not happy, calling the move premature and claiming it will harm the ongoing investigation into the Biden family’s alleged foreign influence-peddling schemes. Future attempts to impeach, they argued, would be undermined by Boebert’s jumping of the proverbial gun.

One House Republican told The Hill that McCarthy has gone so far as to urge Republicans in a closed-door meeting to oppose the impeachment when it reaches the floor later in the week.

Speaking to reporters, McCarthy said, “I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress,” he stated, according to The Hill. “I think you’ve got to go through the process. You’ve got to have the investigation. And throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we’re doing right now.”

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The Speaker revealed that he had invited Boebert on Tuesday to speak to the GOP conference about her impeachment resolution prior to forcing the vote. After reportedly thinking about it, Boebert decided to go ahead with her privileged motion.

“Impeaching Biden upholds my oath,” she explained on Wednesday. “Since the Biden Border Crisis began, over 1800 Coloradans have died from fentanyl. In 2022, State Patrol seized enough fentanyl to kill every Coloradan 23 times over.”

“Impeachment is personal to every Coloradan who lost a loved one to fentanyl,” she stated.

Boebert appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Wednesday to explain her defiant move.

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“I have not heard of support from leadership at this time,” she said. “There was encouragement not to bring this up.”

When asked why she wasn’t receiving Republican support, she called the situation “frustrating.”

“That’s a frustrating thing that I experience a lot here in Washington, D.C.,” she replied. “In the Republican Party, there’s a lot of ‘go along to get along’ and ‘we’ll wait, we’ll do it next time, we’ll do it next Congress.'”

“I’m ready for action now,” she said. “I have left my four boys and my grandson back in Colorado to serve the American people, and I’m not here to waste my time. I’m not here to waste their time. I’m here for action, and we have got to take control of our country.”

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“We have the majority. This does not have to be tabled,” Boebert said during the segment. “If we have Republicans stick together, we can have that debate about the sovereignty of our nation and how important it is to shut the southern border down and secure it.”

But many of Boebert’s GOP colleagues don’t see it that way, pointing to the House’s move to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and the Democrats’ impeachment of then-President Donald Trump.

“We’re going to censure Schiff for actually doing the exact same thing — lying to the American public and taking us through impeachment,” McCarthy said. “We’re going to turn around the next day and do try to do the same thing that Schiff did? I just don’t think that’s honest.”

“This shouldn’t be playground games, in my view. This should be serious,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said on Wednesday. “If there’s real facts for impeachment then you go there. But doing this is wrong, and I think the majority of the conference feels that way.”

“Impeachment shouldn’t be something that is frivolous,” Bacon added. “We should get to the facts of that, but just doing a privileged motion is wrong. It’s a person thinking about themselves instead of the team.”

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McCarthy ally, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), agreed.

“I think that things like impeachment are one of the most awesome powers of the Congress, it’s not something you should flippantly exercise in two days,” he said. “And I think that it actually undermines efforts to hold people accountable in the future.”

“It’s important for the Republican conference to act together in unison to counter the bad policies of the Biden administration,” said Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.). “And therefore, if members want to suggest or bring up the idea of a privileged motion, they ought to come to the conference to discuss that in advance and have a collective discussion of it before they take the decision to do it.”

But not everyone was bashing Boebert.

“Instead of being angry at a member who filed a privileged impeachment motion,” suggested Virginia GOP Rep. Bob Good, “perhaps we should be angry at Biden’s Border Invasion.”

Melissa Fine
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