WASHINGTON — Senators are mixed on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's launching of an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
As Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) explained on Tuesday morning, it isn't actually an impeachment until McCarthy holds a vote on the House floor – and he told the press that won't be happening. Instead, he instructed the House Oversight committee to investigate.
And some in the U.S. Senate admitted that seemed like a waste of time.
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"I'm just wondering if the — threshold or the bar for impeachment seems to get lower and lower every year. It's just something we deal with," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told Raw Story.
When asked about McCarthy not holding a vote, she confessed, "Oh, I hadn't heard that."
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) thinks it's a calculated effort to get access to more information than the House Oversight Committee – which has already spent months trying to find evidence of Biden impropriety – has previously been able to garner.
"When are you going to start asking Democrats whether they support using the 14th Amendment to remove Trump or anyone off the ballot for office like they did in New Mexico," Rubio complained, referencing efforts in some states to remove Trump from the ballot, using a constitutional disqualification of those involved in insurrection.
"Maybe we can get some of those questions asked."
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said that at least they're doing the work first before they do the impeachment. Republicans have been having hearings on Biden in the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees since the start of the year.
"I think they're gonna do an investigation," Scott said when asked whether there'd be an official impeachment.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told Raw Story that, "Impeachment is such an unfortunate and unfounded distraction. I think there's no evidence that would justify it whatsoever, and it will end quickly."
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"These guys are fundamentally unserious," lambasted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). "They're opening an inquiry while openly and proudly admitting they have no grounds. This is what banana dictatorships do, arrest political opponents without any evidence just to harass and intimidate them. So, they're opening an impeachment inquiry even though they admit they have no reason to open an impeachment inquiry. I mean, they're — these are just fundamentally unserious people. As an American, it's pretty sad to watch."
"I spent, you know, much of Trump's first year in office telling my friends why impeachment was not warranted," Murphy explained. "It wasn't until the president used foreign aid to try to advance his political campaign that we had to move forward with impeachment. We had, you know, we had a solid ground, we had a smoking gun transcript. These guys admit that they have no grounds for impeachment. But they've run out of other ideas."
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) doesn't believe the impeachment passes the sniff test either. Speaking with Raw Story Tuesday, he explained that the mandate for "high crimes and misdemeanors" hasn't been met. He does, however, support ongoing hearings like the ones that have been happening in the House.
"Questions are legitimately raised and apparently Speaker McCarthy wants to look into it," Romney said.
Raw Story asked Romney about a claim made by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer's claim that the MAGA base was angry and that they were only doing the impeachment to placate them.
"I certainly don't think you do quid pro quo investigations, but I think that Hunter Biden's misadventures shaking down foreign entities is ugly at best and that the involvement of the president is a legitimate question," Romney dodged. "This is an inquiry, not an impeachment, and an impeachment would be a very different thing. And at this stage, there's no evidence that has been presented to justify an actual impeachment. But an inquiry? That's the first step."
When asked whether politics on Capitol Hill has become "impeachment crazy," Romney said, "Trump brought his impeachments on himself. And in this case, the president and the misadventures of his son have brought them on him."
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) didn't have any positive words for Republicans in the House either.
"I think they need to lead by example and not make the same mistakes the Democrats did," Tillis told reporters. However, he went on to say that the impeachment is for the purpose of finding something to charge the president with. Reporters challenged him on it, asking if looking for dirt would create nothing but impeachments from now on.
"It's becoming more of a vote of no confidence," said Tillis. "The only way you'd get sufficient votes in the Senate to remove the president is to do the homework and assume that you could get 20 Democratic Senate members to agree."
Raw Story pressed him on McCarthy not holding a vote to open an official impeachment inquiry.
"Well, that's, you know, we'll have to decide. It's a potential repeat of what I think were two political impeachments," he said.
"I hope they prove me wrong. I hope they are very thoughtful people that want to get to the data. I hope they spend time to get to it and not take shortcuts."
