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Republican talk about impeaching President Joe Biden had, by all appearances, run its course. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer did his best, spending more than a year searching desperately for evidence of wrongdoing, but the Kentucky congressman failed spectacularly, and even many of the Democrat’s fiercest GOP critics are moving on.
At least, they were. The Hill reported:
Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) is prepping articles of impeachment against President Biden after he warned that the U.S. will stop supplying offensive weapons to Israel if its forces launch an invasion into Rafah. Mills, a first-year lawmaker, unveiled his impeachment resolution Thursday, which charges Biden with abuse of power, and he said he plans to “pursue action” Friday.
For those keeping score, there are now seven different GOP impeachment resolutions that target the president currently pending on Capitol Hill, none of which is likely to reach the House floor.
Mills’ measure came just hours after Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said Congress “has no choice but to impeach Biden.”
As the Republicans’ argument goes, the incumbent president said this week that the United States would not supply Israel with certain weapons and artillery shells if its military invades Rafah. To hear GOP officials tell it, this is an impeachable offense because ... well, it’s a little complicated.
As best as I can tell, Mills and Cotton believe there’s a parallel between Biden’s policy and Donald Trump’s 2019 extortion scheme toward Ukraine, in which the Republican withheld security aid in the hopes of getting Ukraine to help him cheat in his 2020 re-election campaign. It's the scandal that led to Trump's first impeachment.
This is not, however, a serious argument, in large part because there’s nothing illegal about Biden’s policy, and he's not trying to leverage security aid for campaign help.
What’s more, a White House official told The Hill that the GOP’s claims are “ridiculous,” adding, “Senior administration officials had already made multiple public statements about Rafah similar to the President’s, including that we are also ensuring Israel gets every dollar appropriated in the supplemental. Trump failed to spend dollars appropriated by Congress that he was legally required to spend. This is about a purchase made by a foreign government and our decision whether to deliver that purchase right now, which could enable an operation we’ve publicly and privately objected to.”
There’s also historical precedent to consider. As an Associated Press report noted, then-President Dwight Eisenhower “pressured Israel with the threat of sanctions into withdrawing from the Sinai in 1957 amid the Suez Crisis,” while then-President George H.W. Bush “held up $10 billion in loan guarantees to force the cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories.”
What’s more, Ronald Reagan delayed the delivery of F16 fighter jets to Israel and imposed a ban on some weapons sales to Israel “following a congressional probe that found Israel had used them in populated areas in its 1982 offensive in Lebanon.”
Congressional Democrats — it’s worth noting for context — didn’t respond to any of these developments with impeachment threats.
Update: Shortly after I published this post, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise appeared on Fox Business and appeared to take this latest impeachment push seriously.