Since Ted Cruz first raised it a month ago, idea is gaining steam inside Congress and on campaign trail.
Rep. Lance Gooden, a Texas Republican whose district has been overrun by the surge in illegal immigration, says the border insecurity that Joe Biden unleashed isn’t just impacting border states. It’s spreading to the interior of the country, and with it the temptation to impeach the president if Republicans gain control of Congress next year.
“I really believe that impeachment could be on the table,” Gooden told Just the News in a recent interview. “And I would support that, certainly.”
Gooden has been investigating how the Biden administration and nonprofit groups have been funding a mass effort to move illegal aliens from the southern border to the interior of the country, uncovering travel packages that assist the migrants and a weakening of identity security provisions so the migrants can even use their arrest warrants as an acceptable form of ID to board American planes.
Gooden, like all but a handful of Republicans, opposed the Democrats’ two failed impeachment efforts against former President Donald Trump. He says while those actions lowered the bar for impeachment, Biden’s record of mismanagement qualifies him for removal under even a tougher strandard.
“The bar was so low to impeach President Trump,” he told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And even if the bar were raised exponentially, I believe that President Biden has met that requirement. What we’re seeing at the border is not just criminal, but it is immoral.
“The fact that our United States government is putting its own citizens behind those of other nations, and also encouraging human trafficking. And what we’re seeing [is] they’re filling the bank accounts and the cash stashes of the cartel. It’s really a travesty. And it’s not what this country should be about.”
When Sen. Ted Cruz first suggested a Biden impeachment was possible a month ago, he was panned by the media, and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said it would not happen.
But since then, a growing chorus of Republicans are arguing for it, and even leaders like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 Republican in the House, have been forced to acknowledge the rising voices,
“Anything is on the table when we are in the majority,” Stefanik told Just the News, noting the border crisis is now inflaming her own state as illegal migrants have been shipped north to places like New York’s Weschester County.
“We’re focused like a laser on the crises in America, and what I hear from voters even in my district in Northern New York — because I represent border patrol officers who have been transferred again and again and again to the southern border — is that the crisis after crisis is a catastrophe.
“What I believe we should focus on is conducting oversight, and making sure that we’re passing legislation to secure the border once and for all and return the policies of the previous administration under President Trump.”
Some rebellious members of the GOP caucus, like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Bob Gibbs of Ohio, have already introduced articles of impeachment even knowing they won’t be considered as long as Democrats are in charge.
“This is a shot across the bow,” Gibbs said recently. “When Republicans take back the House, we will take our commitment to the separation of powers, our role as a check and balance to the executive branch, seriously. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the entire administration is officially on notice.”
The issue has even spilled onto the campaign trail, where upstart Republicans like J.D. Vance are using it to run for office and gain support in the GOP primaries. Vance is running for Senate in Ohio, where drug overdoses tied to border trafficking have surged.
“The thing that I think Biden has done that is genuinely unprecedented in the history of this country is to sanction, encourage and pay for an invasion of this country,” Vance said.
“A lot of negative things I could say about Bill Clinton, but Bill Clinton did not allow an invasion on this scale, or actively encourage people to do it, even while the leading cause of death for communities, among young people, is the fentanyl they’re bringing in from Mexico,” he added. “This is ridiculous, it’s traitorous conduct, and we need to do something about it.”
Cruz has said he does not believe impeachment should be politically weaponized or used to pay back Democrats for the Trump proceedings. But he added the border crisis — including Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration laws on the books — could provide a legitimate grounds for impeachment.
“Probably the most compelling [grounds are] the utter lawlessness of President Biden’s refusal to enforce the border,” Cruz said. “His decision to just defy federal immigration laws and allow two million people to come here unimpeded in direct contravention of his obligation under Article 2 of the Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
“That is probably the strongest grounds right now for impeachment, but there may be others.”