President Joe Biden’s top White House counsel sent a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) urging him to end his chamber’s impeachment efforts.
“It is obviously time to move on, Mr. Speaker,” Siskel wrote. “This impeachment is over. There is too much important work to be done for the American people to continue wasting time on this charade.”
WHAT?
“White House sends scathing letter telling Mike Johnson that Biden impeachment probe is ‘over’”In a scathing letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, White House Counsel Ed Siskel said it had become “clear” that the “House Republican impeachment is over,” citing reporting by… pic.twitter.com/T6EJyvKTam
— Jim Weed (@JimBobW49) March 15, 2024
The impeachment stems from claims that Biden benefitted from his son’s and brother’s business dealings and that they used Biden’s position for profit.
Siskel believes that Republicans have been looking for an impeachable offense long enough and that it is time to give up. He claimed that Republicans turned in more than 100,000 pages of records and conducted numerous interviews and “none of the evidence has demonstrated that the president did anything wrong”.
Johnson disagrees, declaring that the probe has unearthed “a lot of things that we believe that violated the law.”
“Does it reach the ‘treason, high crimes and misdemeanor’ standard?” Johnson said. “Everyone will have to make that evaluation when we pull all the evidence together.”
Many people believe that the letter from the White House came at this time because GOP control of the House is smaller than ever and the White House senses weakness. White House counsel sending the Speaker a letter like this one is almost unprecedented and shows a more aggressive approach from Biden as the election nears.
Siskel also quotes Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) who is the latest GOP congressman to vacate his seat. With Buck leaving, the GOP majority is down to 2.
“We’ve taken impeachment and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept. This place keeps going downhill and I don’t need to spend more time here,” Buck claimed, obviously fed up with the way Washington politics are happening.
“I know that people have gotten frustrated sometimes that it’s [dragged] on too long. But in our constitutional system, that is the way it’s supposed to work,” Johnson told reporters.
The House Speaker also responded to Siskel’s letter in a statement to Fox News’ Chad Pergram on Capitol Hill Friday, declaring, “They don’t call the shots on it” and noting that “we’ll deliberate over that when the investigation is complete.”