Mike Johnson’s Own Words on Impeachment Come Back to Haunt Him

House Speaker Mike Johnson once warned about the exact impeachment strategy his party is now pursuing against Joe Biden.

In a video from 2019 recently resurfaced by MSNBC, Johnson raises concerns about Democrats opening an impeachment inquiry against Trump along party lines, as well as an impeachment happening within a year of a presidential election.

Johnson also warned that the Founding Fathers would have been against Trump’s impeachment because they believed a “single-party impeachment” would divide Americans.

“The Founding Fathers warned us,” Johnson said in 2019.

The House plans on authorizing Biden’s impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.

Republicans are doubling down on their removal of the phrase “open and transparent” from a proposed resolution to impeach President Joe Biden, continuing to defend a move that by all means looks like an effort to keep the American people in the dark and out of a legal challenge to the nation’s highest elected official.

Republicans on the House Rules Committee on Tuesday voted against adding the clause back into their impeachment rules.

A senior House Republican aide identified with House Speaker Mike Johnson previously said that the term was excluded from the resolution on the basis that it was “too wordy,” according to USA Today.

But Democrats got feisty about that, pointing toward their 2019 impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, which didn’t just include the phrase in its text but utilized it as a header to front a section explaining the proceedings.

“My point is that at the impeachment inquiry phase, when we took that vote, from then on, everything was public, which is why the resolution was structured as such,” said Colorado Representative Joe Neguse. “In this instance, Republicans have removed it, and it’s clear that they don’t intend to have a public process.”

Neguse also highlighted that Republicans’ impeachment rules, as currently written, don’t require a single public hearing.

The blatant dismissal of the phrase seems more akin to shirking responsibility for a transparent proceeding, despite aggressive Republican signaling otherwise.

On Tuesday, Republican Representative Guy Reschenthaler claimed the inquiry was inherently transparent because “you can’t turn on a news program” without seeing Representatives Jim Jordan or House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer discussing the investigation.

It’s not the only aspect of the inquiry in which Republicans are insisting on discretion. Last week, the caucus threatened to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if he refused to appear for a closed-door deposition, despite the president’s son’s previously voiced preference for a public hearing, fearing that information from those interviews would be selectively leaked and used to “manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public.”

Congressional interns are calling their bosses out, accusing the rank and file of Capitol Hill of downplaying constituent calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, claiming that hundreds of thousands of messages from U.S. citizens and staff have gone “unnoticed and unheard.”

In an open letter signed by 140 interns and fellows working for Democratic and Republican offices, the collective noted that congressional phone lines and inboxes have been more than overwhelmed with messages calling for an immediate cease-fire. In just 71 of 535 congressional offices, constituents placed more than 693,170 calls, letters, and voice messages demanding a cease-fire, according to the group.

“We believe Israel, like any nation, has the right to defend itself and its people. However, there is no justification for the wanton killing of innocent civilians. There is no justification for intentionally bombing hospitals, shelters, water supplies, religious sites, or schools. This is no longer an act of defense. It is genocide,” the letter read.

“While we refrain from telling our bosses how to do their jobs, as congressional interns and fellows, we owe it to the American people to expose the patent malpractice of Congress. We can no longer stand by while the voices of constituents are suppressed and ignored by their elected officials,” they added, avoiding naming themselves for fear of career retaliation.

The interns also noted that some members of Congress have not been “adequately briefed” about the volume or contents of the messages and that despite congressional inaction, they would do “everything in our power to ensure a permanent ceasefire is achieved.”

“To diminish the intelligence of people who support a ceasefire, to blatantly spread misinformation within the office about the conflict, and to actively make other staff feel uncomfortable is appalling,” read one testimonial included in the letter. “There is a clear disconnect between what the American public wants and what their representatives are doing.”

This isn’t the first report that members of Congress are ignoring constituent calls for a ceasefire. Last month, a HuffPost report found that several Democratic lawmakers explicitly told their staff to let the ringing go to voicemail. At the time, one staffer said the calls don’t “stop ringing at any point in the day.”

Sixty-one percent of all likely voters support a cease-fire and calls for the deescalation of violence in Gaza, according to a December 5 Data for Progress poll. That same poll found that the majority of respondents (63 percent), including Republicans, felt that Israel should only receive more aid under the condition that it meets a U.S. standard for human rights.

Meanwhile, only 11 percent of Congress feels the same, with just 61 lawmakers having issued statements calling for a cease-fire.

At least 18,412 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, and 1.7 million people (or 81 percent of the total population) have been displaced, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations.

Rudy Giuliani just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

The former Trump attorney got grilled by a federal judge on Tuesday, who argued that Giuliani’s post-court tirade, during which he espoused more of the 2020 election lies that he’s on the stand for to begin with, could warrant more defamation charges.

America’s mayor is currently on trial to determine how many millions he owes a pair of Georgia poll workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Giuliani was already found liable in August for defaming them after he accused the duo of manipulating ballots—claims that transformed into months of harassment, death threats, and protesters at their doorsteps.

Outside the courthouse on Monday, the very first day after his trial, Giuliani told a gaggle of reporters that he still stands by those claims.

“Of course I don’t regret it, I told the truth,” Giuliani said. “They were engaged in changing votes.”

“When I testify, the whole story will be definitively clear that what I said was true, and that, whatever happened to them—which is unfortunate about other people overreacting—everything I said about them is true,” he added.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell was incensed by the accusations, which flew in the face of part of Giuliani’s defense, which argued that Freeman and Moss were “good people” who did not deserve what happened to them. Even Giuliani’s attorney, Joe Sibley, had a hard time defending his client’s behavior, admitting that the two statements were not “reconcilable” before blaming Giuliani’s inflammatory comments on the 79-year-old’s age.

“Was Mr. Giuliani just playing for the cameras?” Howell asked Sibley on Tuesday, noting that his recent comments “could support another defamation claim.”

It may be a supernova blast in the limelight for America’s disgraced mayor, whose star is quickly dying amid a flurry of legal charges that have all but bankrupted him. After this expensive trial, Giuliani will be one of 19 co-defendants in the Fulton County election interference case in which he stands accused of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” in Georgia that pressured state officials to reverse Trump’s election loss.

But Giuliani may be undone even before he’s handed a sentence. In September, the criminal defendant was sued by his former legal representation for failing to pay his bill, allegedly only dishing out $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses, after he claimed he was stiffed by his favorite client, Trump, to the tune of millions of dollars.

It should serve as a lesson to even the closest of Trump’s allies: There’s no thanks for helping the real estate mogul. Despite the bad blood, Giuliani apparently had no other option than to beg Trump for help settling his seven-figure legal fees, to which the stingy developer refused but offered to throw a couple of fundraisers for him instead.

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz was recently surprised with an award at an Ohio GOP event, congratulating him for his dedication to using Venmo to allegedly pay underage girls for sex.

On a livestream of the Strongsville Republican Party’s Christmas gathering, which took place Thursday, a man who introduced himself as “Mike with the Strongsville GOP” went on stage and invited Gaetz to join him. He then presented the 2023 Strongsville GOP award and offered the odd congratulations to Gaetz.

“Congratulations for your dedication to using Venmo to allegedly pay underage girls to have sex with you,” the presenter said, catching Gaetz off guard.

“Oh come on man, you’re so full of it,” Gaetz replied, as he continued to awkwardly hold the award in his hand. Police immediately escorted the presenter away.

The Department of Justice decided in February that it would not charge Gaetz after its sex-trafficking investigation. But since then, the House Ethics Committee has reopened its own investigation into Gaetz—looking at the Florida congressman’s alleged sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and other misconduct.

The Daily Beast reported in 2021 that the congressman had paid a 17-year-old girl as well as accused sex trafficker Joel Greenberg through Venmo. Greenberg, an associate of Gaetz’s and at the center of the DOJ investigation, pleaded guilty the next month on charges ranging from falsifying identification to the sex trafficking of a child. He was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison.