The effort to impeach Joe Biden over his threats to block arms shipments to Israel appears to have stalled.
Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) submitted one article of impeachment against President Joe Biden. It stated that "Using the powers of his high office, President Biden solicited a 'quid pro quo' with the foreign government of Israel by withholding precision guided weapons shipments in order to try and extract military policy changes."
"President Biden sought to pressure the Government of Israel to take steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Israel," the article of impeachment read. "After initial reports surfaced, President Biden confirmed them and openly stated 'I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven't gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem.'"
While this appeared to be something that House Republicans could easily rally behind, as Biden's holding of arms was panned by both Republicans and Democrats, it has only gained five co-sponsors since its introduction. Mills now plans to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson to "strengthen the language" of the resolution, but this has not swayed the speaker to support the impeachment articles.
According to a report from the Washington Times, "Several House Republicans said the president’s actions do not meet the high threshold for impeachment. Others argued that the GOP should stay focused on the long-running impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden’s family business deals."
Mr. Mills hasn’t generated interest in the impeachment despite basing it on the very same law that Democrats accused former President Donald Trump of breaking when he was impeached in 2019. He accused Mr. Biden of breaking the Impoundment Control Act by threatening to continue withholding weapons approved by Congress. That 1974 law, passed during the height of the Watergate scandal, restricted a president’s ability to block funding previously allocated by Congress.
In 2019, Democrats accused Mr. Trump of breaking that law when he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he would hold back $319 million of approved funding unless Ukraine officials opened an investigation into Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Mr. Mills noted the parallels between the two impeachments and even reused much of the language from the 2019 impeachment resolution by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat.
“The brilliance of what I was trying to achieve here, though, was that when the Democrats set an improper precedent we always try and take the moral high ground, and I agree with that,” Mr. Mills said. “But at the end of the day, how much longer we can allow them to get away with this?”
Despite the fact that Democrats impeached Trump over accusations of the same crime, the White House and Democrats assert that Biden's threats to block arms shipments to Israel were different. According to them, they were a legitimate exercise of his authority as commander-in-chief.
It's funny how that works, isn't it?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member