House Republican Calls Out Biden Impeachment: “There’s No Evidence”

Kevin McCarthy is making it increasingly clear that he intends to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden—but some of his Republicans are furious with him for it.

Republicans have insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, despite producing no actual evidence. McCarthy has suggested opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden next month, once Congress returns from recess, so that Republicans can access more information and witnesses, which will supposedly lead them to the truth.

McCarthy is doubling down on his threat behind closed doors, CNN reported Monday, but Republicans are not unified behind him.

“There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that,” one GOP lawmaker, speaking anonymously, told CNN. “And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t I don’t think the evidence exists.”

Republicans have (inadvertently) admitted before that they have zero proof of wrongdoing by Biden. But even lawmakers who support impeachment proceedings don’t back opening an inquiry now.

Representative Matt Rosendale, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, on Monday called an impeachment inquiry into Biden “long overdue” but accused McCarthy of using the threat to distract from upcoming appropriations votes.

“I’m afraid now that he’s bringing it up just to use it as a distraction so that he can try and push forward this continued resolution which many of us are not going to sign off on,” Rosendale told Newsmax.

Congress has not passed all the necessary appropriations bills, and it is unlikely to do so by its September 30 deadline. Party leaders on both sides have suggested passing a continuing resolution to keep funds flowing until all the bills have passed. But the Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right House Republicans, says it will not support a stopgap. If Congress fails to pass the stopgap measure, the government is at risk of a shutdown.

McCarthy has warned a shutdown would prevent Republicans from continuing to investigate Biden, including by opening an impeachment inquiry, in an attempt to bridge the gap between sides. But it doesn’t seem to be working.

Ken Buck, another member of the Freedom Caucus, slammed all the impeachment inquiry talk in July. “This is impeachment theater,” the Colorado Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash.

“What [McCarthy’s] doing is he’s saying, ‘There’s a shiny object over here, and we’re really going to focus on that. We just need to get all these things done so that we can focus on the shiny object,’” Buck said. “Most of us are concerned about spending.”

Donald Trump’s election interference case is set to begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan made the decision on Monday. The trial date makes Trump’s upcoming campaign calendar incredibly tricky. Super Tuesday is one of the most important days in the primary calendar. It is the day when the largest number of states hold primary elections and caucuses. Trump will have a harder time rallying voters ahead of Super Tuesday because he needs to prepare for the trial.

Trump was indicted for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, one of four indictments. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump for this indictment and for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, requested that the trial begin in January. Trump’s team proposed the trial begin in April 2026, well after the presidential election. The hope was likely that Trump would have been re-elected by then and could avoid federal charges.

“These proposals are obviously very far apart,” Chutkan said Monday. “Neither of them is acceptable.”

She said Trump will have to prioritize the trial, and the schedule will not change based on his professional obligations, meaning campaign events. She pointed out that this is no different from how she would treat any other defendant.

This trial will also land just two months before Trump’s trial in the classified documents case. The second trial, which is set for May 20, is expected to take two weeks. If it does, it will overlap with primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. The schedule also would leave no time to host events ahead of primaries in Washington, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota, which will all occur immediately after the trial.

This article has been updated.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is doubling down on his comparison of Representative Ayanna Pressley to a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.

On Sunday, Ramaswamy received a grilling from CNN’s Dana Bash on his remarks.

“The KKK wasn’t just about rhetoric—they lynched people, they murdered people, they raped people, they burned their homes,” Bash argued. “If you want to have an intellectual discussion do you think that maybe comparing [Pressley] to the grand wizard and the notion of what she said to being a modern leader of the KKK was maybe a step too far, or you stand by what you said?”

Ramaswamy told Bash he stands by what he said.

Ramaswamy first compared Pressley to the KKK grand wizard during a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday.

He was criticizing Pressley, the first Black representative from Massachusetts, for remarks she made in 2019 on how “we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice.”

The GOP presidential candidate also attacked How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X. Kendi, pushing the idea that progressives are the real racists. 

“The greatest racism I’ve experienced—and I have experienced racism—comes from the modern left at a scale unimaginable,” Ramaswamy said. “These are the words of the modern grand wizards of the modern KKK.”

Ramaswamy refused to back down from the incendiary words on Sunday, telling Bash he believed Pressley’s comment had the same “spirit” as the KKK.

“I stand by what I said to provoke an open and honest discussion in this country,” he said. “We need to have real, open, honest, raw conversations as Americans. That is our path to national unity.”

Pressley, for her part, called Ramaswamy’s comments “deeply offensive.”

“The verbal assault lobbied against myself and Dr. Kendi is shameful. It is deeply offensive. And it is dangerous,” she said. “I remain squarely focused on the work of undoing the centuries of harm that has precisely been done to Black Americans and charting a path of true restorative justice and racial justice forward.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was loudly booed while at a weekend vigil for victims of a racist mass shooting in Jacksonville.

A white man opened fire in a Dollar General store in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Saturday, killing three people, all of whom were Black. The shooter, who then killed himself, used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, at least one of which was painted with a swastika. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the shooter “hated Black people” and acted alone.

DeSantis attended a vigil Sunday night. But when he tried to give a speech, the crowd began booing him so loudly that he was drowned out. Some people also shouted “Black Lives Matter!” and “Black history matters!” This was a reference to DeSantis’s administration blocking an AP African American Studies course and rewriting the state’s Black history curriculum, which now requires teachers to tell students that enslaved people learned valuable skills from slavery.

Jacksonville Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman stepped in and told the crowd to stop, saying, “It ain’t about parties today. A bullet don’t know a party.”

But the boos for DeSantis are understandable. In addition to his attacks on Black history, the governor has signed multiple bills this year that make it easier for people to access firearms. In April, DeSantis signed a law that would allow people to carry concealed loaded guns without any permits, training, or background checks. A month later, he signed a law preventing credit card companies from tracking firearm and ammunition sales, making it harder to track suspicious weapons purchases.

The first Republican presidential debate started on an odd note—literally—when the moderators played a song called “Rich Men North of Richmond” for the candidates. The singer and songwriter, Oliver Anthony, thinks it’s extra weird they used his song.

“I wrote that song about those people,” he said in a YouTube video posted Friday, referring to the candidates. “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news trying to identify with me like I’m one of them.”

He also addressed how many conservatives have embraced the song as a new right-wing protest anthem. “The one thing has bothered me is seeing people wrap politics up in this,” he said. “It’s aggravating to see certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies, like we’re fighting the same struggle here.”

As of Friday, “Rich Men North of Richmond” is number one on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. The song decries the rich and powerful who exploit working classes.

Despite Anthony’s protests, the debate moderators, Fox News anchors Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum, told Politico Friday they got his permission to use the song.

The song also does have a vein of QAnon conspiracy theory running through it, as well as extremist political undertones. In “Rich Men North of Richmond” and in other songs of his, Anthony appears to embrace popular conservative talking points and conspiracies.

In one line of “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Anthony judges the grocery purchases of overweight “welfare queens.” He also makes references to human trafficking and people taking advantage of children, a clear reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory that Democrats and Hollywood elites run a global sex trafficking ring. And in another song, released Wednesday, Anthony says the U.S. is on the cusp of a new world war—something to which right-wing leaders have also alluded.