WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives voted Thursday to send Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) impeachment resolution to a committee.
The Colorado Republican initially wanted to actually impeach President Joe Biden, and she used a special House procedure that would have forced the vote, but the idea was unpopular with a lot of Republicans and she wound up settling for the committee referral instead.
“People just all talked about it,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told HuffPost before the vote. “We want to make sure the investigation can continue through and nothing goes to harm that, so referring it to committee.”
Nevertheless, Boebert described Thursday’s vote as historic, hailing it as the first time in 24 years that a Republican majority moved forward with impeachment proceedings against a current president.
Instead of enforcing immigration laws, Boebert said of Biden, “he has lawlessly ignored them and released more than 2 million illegal aliens into the interior of the United States without any enforcement mechanism to ensure they appear in immigration court.”
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the referral wouldn’t change how his panel is approaching its examination of the administration’s immigration policies, even though the impeachment ball is essentially in his committee’s court now.
“We’re looking at all the things that they’re failing to do,” Green told reporters.
“There’s not going to be that much of a change, other than we’ll dig into the actual actions of the president in conjunction with what’s happened.”
Green did not give a timeline for committee action or for referring potential impeachment charges to the House Judiciary Committee.
“The timeline of our investigation is pretty much in our heads, right? We kind of know the pathway,” he said.
Last year Customs and Border Protection arrests at the border exceeded 2 million for the first time, though apprehensions have slowed since then. More than a million of those arrested have been screened and released in the U.S. to await court proceedings adjudicating their status.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) mocked Republicans for trying to impeach the president instead of trying to change immigration laws.
“If they wanted to, they would legislate in a way that would change a policy, but that’s not what they want to do. This is about protecting Donald Trump,” McGovern said.
The Justice Department indicted Trump earlier this month for obstruction of Justice and other charges relating to his refusal to hand over classified documents after leaving the White House. House Republicans ratcheted up their attacks on Biden after the indictment, particularly highlighting an unverified allegation that Biden took a bribe when he was vice president.
The impeachment resolution only concerns border security, omitting other prominent Republican complaints about Biden, such as the alleged bribe, the hasty U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan and the alleged “weaponization” of the government against Trump and his supporters.
It appears that support for impeaching Biden now is mostly confined to the ranks of the far-right House Freedom Caucus. Several Republicans said in response to Boebert’s gambit to force a vote this week that it was too soon to impeach.
Fending off Boebert’s “privileged” resolution represents McCarthy’s latest success in tamping down dissent among right-wing Republicans, many of whom only reluctantly supported his speakership. Earlier this month, hardliners stalled House proceedings to protest a budget deal McCarthy struck with Biden.
Freedom Caucus member Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) complained that Boebert “copied” her earlier impeachment resolution against Biden. Greene said she would avail herself of such privileged motions in the future in her quest to impeach Biden and several other officials in his administration.
Jonathan Nicholson contributed to this story.