WASHINGTON ― Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is losing patience with House leadership over its refusal to join her quest to impeach President Joe Biden as a rival Republican firebrand looks to steal her thunder.
The House will likely vote Thursday on a presidential impeachment resolution ― except it’s by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) rather than Greene, who initially introduced articles of impeachment against Biden way back in January. Boebert used a special procedure to force the House to take up her resolution against the apparent wishes of House GOP leadership.
The speaker normally dictates when and what the House votes on, and Republican leaders urged their rank-and-file during a conference meeting on Wednesday to vote against Boebert’s resolution. They argued it’s too soon for impeachment ― a sentiment many Republicans seemed to share.
Greene spoke out at the meeting in favor of Boebert’s resolution even though it wasn’t her own.
“I made it clear in the conference to everyone in the conference ― and I don’t have a problem addressing the conference. Lauren Boebert never addressed the conference. But I made it clear to the conference that I have introduced articles of impeachment literally since Joe Biden’s first day in office on this Ukraine issue,” Greene told reporters on Wednesday.
Greene introduced a resolution in January to impeach Biden for “enabling bribery” when he was vice president by “allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation,” namely Ukraine, essentially recycling the discredited allegation at the heart of former President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment. Last month, she introduced another impeachment resolution, this one faulting Biden for allegedly failing to secure the southern border.
“I’m not in middle school. This isn’t a copycat game.”
- Rep. Lauren Boebert
Boebert’s impeachment proposal, which she introduced on the House floor Tuesday evening, also relates to border security, a favorite topic of Republican attacks against Biden. Greene complained to reporters on Wednesday that Boebert refused to co-sponsor her immigration-related impeachment resolution last month.
“She basically copied my articles and then just introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution,” Greene said.
Boebert denied being a copycat.
“I’m not in middle school. This isn’t a copycat game,” she told HuffPost. “Copying her would be her going and demanding a vote on the floor, and then me going and doing it right after.”
Greene’s frustration is rooted not only in Boebert’s move to steal her thunder, but also in the GOP conference’s general lack of enthusiasm for impeachment. Many Republicans seem to agree with leadership that it’s too soon to try to throw Biden out of office.
“Let’s see what the facts look like a month from now, or two months,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who thinks Biden is the worst president in U.S. history. “There are all sorts of investigations going on right now.”
On Wednesday, Greene complained that she’s paid all her campaign dues to the National Republican Congressional Committee, voted for the “shit sandwich” debt ceiling bill and “got the votes for McCarthy to become speaker” without getting enough in return. Her own impeachment resolutions haven’t seen any action, such as a markup in the House Judiciary Committee.
“I can’t have them even start the process on Judiciary for impeachment when everybody knows the president is a criminal and took a $5 million bribe?” Greene said, referring to an unverified tip the FBI received in 2020 regarding Biden and Ukraine.
Republicans pressured the FBI into showing them a redacted copy of the FBI’s intake form reflecting the tip, but the bureau has refused to let lawmakers have their own copy. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who saw the document and received a briefing from FBI officials, has said investigators considered the allegation meritless.
“Christopher Wray, the corrupt FBI director, is forcing us to look at unclassified documents in a [secure room] and they’re redacted?” Greene said. “Like I’m sorry, I’m done. This place needs to do something and I made it clear this morning and I’m not backing off of it.”
Greene and Boebert, who were both elected in 2018 as radicals with a taste for outlandish conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric, have sniped at each other at least since the vote for McCarthy in January, when Boebert compared Greene’s support for the speaker to the Georgian’s past belief in “Jewish space lasers.”
While Greene has managed to maneuver herself into becoming an influential ally of both McCarthy and Trump, Boebert ― who barely won reelection in 2022 ― has been sidelined, more likely to ally herself with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) than with GOP leadership.
In addition to Biden, Greene has introduced impeachment resolutions against Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and D.C. U.S. Attorney Michael Graves.
Though Greene complained Boebert copied her resolution, she said she would make her resolutions “privileged” to avail herself of the same fast-track process Boebert’s using this week.
“I’m converting them to privileged to use it when I feel it’s necessary,” she said.