House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday told reporters during a news conference that Thursday’s expected vote by the full House on whether to proceed with a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden was not “political,” while suggesting that the two impeachments of then-President Donald Trump by a Democrat majority were.
“We’re following the Constitution. And I’ve made this very clear. Remember, my background is constitutional law,” Johnson said in justifying his decision to move to a full vote. “I served on an impeachment defense team twice under President Trump. We developed, unfortunately, [Rep.] Elise [Stefanik – R-N.Y.] and I, an expertise in this area. This is not something they really covered in law school.
“What you know about impeachment, if you look at the Constitution, is, it’s a heavy authority that’s given to the House, specifically to the House. That’s where the power lies. And next to the declaration of war, you’ve all heard me say many times, I think it may be the heaviest power that we have. It’s very, very serious business,” he said.
“It has to be conducted in that way. The impeachment inquiry is necessary now, as our, as [Minority] Whip [Tom] Emmer [R-Minn.] just explained because we’ve come to this impasse where following the facts where they lead is hitting a stone wall because the white House is impeding that investigation now,” the Speaker noted further. “They’re not allowing witnesses to come forward and thousands of pages of documents.
“So we have no choice,” he reasoned. “To fulfill our constitutional responsibility, we have to take the next step. We’re not making a political decision. It’s not. It’s a legal decision. So people have feelings about it one way or the other. We can’t prejudge the outcome.
“The Constitution does not permit us to do so. We have to follow the truth where it takes us, and that is exactly what we’re going to do. And I’ll note, too, I know that that that people are, you know, frustrated sometimes with the time that’s being invested in this,” Johnson noted further.
“But this is the way the founders anticipated that something like this would go. There’s no — there shouldn’t be any such thing as a snap impeachment, a sham impeachment, like the Democrats did against President Trump. This is the opposite of that. And that’s why people are getting restless, because they want things to happen quickly,” he said.
“If you follow the Constitution and you do the right thing, you cannot rush it. You have to follow the facts,” Johnson concluded.
