Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., disputed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s claim that he started an impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden without a unanimous House vote because she initiated an investigation into then-President Donald Trump in 2019, setting the precedent for such a move.
McCarthy’s announcement of the Biden impeachment investigation on Tuesday was a U-turn after he had previously declared he wouldn’t launch an investigation without a House vote. Members of his caucus had expressed concerns about pursuing an investigation when he first took a position.
McCarthy stated on Tuesday that House Republicans would launch the impeachment inquiry and ask Biden and his son Hunter Biden for bank records and other papers, calling it the “logical next step” in the GOP-led investigations that have been ongoing for months. Additionally, he informed reporters that Pelosi “changed the precedents for the House” while she was speaker, which is why he decided against putting the matter to a floor vote. He claimed that Nancy Pelosi modified the House’s precedent on September 24 by removing the requirement for a vote.
Willie Geist, Pelosi’s co-anchor, questioned her about McCarthy’s contention that she had established a precedent and his assertion that she had delayed the investigation for a long period during their interview on “Morning Joe” on Thursday.
She responds that McCathy’s argument is “hogwash” because Democrats did vote in favor of impeaching Trump in a matter of weeks.
Pelosi remarked, “I mean, it’s ridiculous.” “And I’m not sure why the media keeps mentioning it. The truth is, we committed to doing what we said we would do. I charged my six committee chairs with gathering the facts in order to take appropriate action. Perhaps that sounds strange to say in this place, but the facts require action.
Republicans have come under fire from Pelosi for their months-long investigations of Biden and his family, which have not turned up any evidence of the president’s malfeasance or any ties to Hunter Biden’s international business operations.
They spent eight months looking into the matter without finding anything, and now they’re attempting to justify not holding a vote by pointing out that Nancy didn’t hold one on the first day. “No, a vote was taken. We were getting ready to cast a vote.
When it comes to impeachment, she emphasized that “you have to do it with care but not on impulse,” and that House Democrats proceeded through with the process once they “had the case ready.”
Currently, they have been looking into this for months with no results, Pelosi stated. And now they’re going to declare without any evidence that “we won’t have a vote on how we move forward.”
Don’t hold it against me, she said. Simply accept responsibility for your actions and don’t distort the care we took or the respect we had for the institution in order to go forward in a way that effectively handled Donald Trump’s serious crimes and misdemeanors.
When contacted for comment regarding Pelosi’s pushback against McCarthy’s claims that she set a precedent, the speaker’s communications director, Mark Bednar, cited NBC News’ coverage of Pelosi’s decision to begin the impeachment investigation into the former president in 2019 and questioned whether she would be questioned about that.
Requests for comment from the Trump campaign were not immediately fulfilled.
Without a vote from the entire House, Pelosi opened the first impeachment investigation into Trump in 2019. About two and a half months after she began the formal investigation, House Democrats released two articles of impeachment against the then-president.
They claimed Trump “corruptly solicited the government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations” into the Bidens and encouraged the myth that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. Trump was accused of being a foreign agent in December 2019, but the Senate ultimately cleared him. The president frequently accused his political rivals of conducting a “witch hunt” in the investigation while denying any wrongdoing.