House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Wednesday urged House Republicans to reject a push from Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., that would force a vote to impeach President Joe Biden.
McCarthy made the argument during a closed-door meeting among House Republicans, according to multiple reports. The speaker said the Colorado Republican’s effort to impeach Biden should move through House committees instead of more quickly moving to a vote in the lower chamber.
“I just think running something on the floor isn’t fair to the American public without making the case and making the argument,” McCarthy said, ABC News reported, calling for Boebert, a member of the House Oversight Committee, to work through that panel.
McCarthy also warned that the move could threaten Republicans’ slim majority in the House.
“What majority do we want to be,” McCarthy said, according to multiple sources. “Give it right back in two years or hold it for a decade and make real change?”
Washington: Lauren Boebert is trying to impeach President Joe Biden. The White House calls it a stunt.
Boebert on Tuesday introduced articles of impeachment against Biden over his handling of the southern border. She brought the impeachment articles to the floor as a privileged resolution, which would have forced a vote on the push this week.
McCarthy later on Wednesday negotiated a deal with the Colorado Republican to send her resolution to the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, delaying a vote among the entire House.
Boebert on the House floor said Biden’s management of the United States’ border with Mexico shows he has “acted in a manner grossly incompatible with the rule of law.”
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House, called the push from Boebert a “baseless political stunt.”
“Instead of working with @POTUS on the issues that matter most to Americans, like jobs and inflation and health care, extreme House Republicans are staging baseless political stunts that do nothing to help real people, just to try to get attention for themselves,” Sams tweeted.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has also pushed to impeach Biden, along with several other administration officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves.
Greene said she would support the resolution, according to multiple reports, but called her fellow Republican a “copycat.”
Boebert in a statement to USA TODAY said, “Impeachment is personal to every Coloradan who lost a loved one to fentanyl.”
“Coloradans know that Joe Biden needs to be impeached. Under his unconstitutional dereliction of duty at the border, our state has been overrun by crime and drug overdoses,” she said.