'Rumor and innuendo': Vulnerable House Republicans threaten McCarthy’s path to Biden impeachment

Several vulnerable House Republicans are expressing doubt about a possible impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month floated the possibility in an interview with Fox News.

On July 24, McCarthy told host Sean Hannity that investigations into the Biden family by the House Oversight Committee “are rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed.”

But, as NBC News reports, “ McCarthy can lose no more than four GOP votes” if he pursues an impeachment inquiry — and “the make-or-break votes will come from 18 politically vulnerable Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020 and other self-styled GOP pragmatists.”

“Impeachment should not be political by any stretch,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said. “We’ve seen what happens when Congress acts in a political matter — it does not serve the interests of the American people in any way.”

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) echoed a similar sentiment.

“We’ve got to get back to a point where impeachment is what it was intended to be,” Fitzpatrick told NBC News. “I feel like, you know, both in the last cycle and in this cycle, we’re converting into essentially a vote of no confidence in the British Parliament. And I don’t want to see our country go down that path.”

While he concedes “it’s too early for a formal impeachment inquiry,” Rep. Don Bacon, (R-NE) is keeping the door open.

NBC reports the freshman representative “said he believes the president was ‘more involved’ with his son's business dealings than he admitted and that the GOP investigations should continue.”

But, Bacon warned, “We should have more confidence that actual high crimes and misdemeanors occurred before starting a formal impeachment inquiry.”

To that effect, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH), a former county prosecutor, noted he’s heard “a lot of rumor and innuendo” about the Biden family, “but that’s not fact to me.”

“I think there has to be due process that we follow, and I’ve not seen any of that today,” Joyce said.

For Lawler, the representative from New York, “the question to me right now is do the investigations — are they producing enough facts and evidence that warrant taking it to the next step?”

“I don’t think it’s there at the moment,” Lawler said. “But these committees are doing their job.”

“Some of the stuff obviously deserves further review,” Joyce, the former prosecutor, noted. “but there is nothing hard in front of us at this moment to say that any of that is true.”