Former Secretary of State and unsuccessful presidential candidate Hillary Clinton asserted on Sunday that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lacks the strength to confront the most extreme members of his party. This comment came in response to a question about the impeachment inquiry initiated by Republicans against President Joe Biden.
“I don’t know how they can proceed with an impeachment if they haven’t had a vote,” Clinton said on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki. “I don’t know how they’re just basically blowing off the process.”
This month, McCarthy authorized the House’s impeachment inquiry into Biden, a step that enables members of the lower chamber to access records and other documents related to purported foreign business dealings involving the president and his son, Hunter Biden.
Previously, McCarthy had insisted that any impeachment inquiry would necessitate a vote in the House, stating that it should happen “through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person.”
Although a constitutional mandate doesn’t require a vote to initiate an impeachment inquiry, the decision to do so without a vote contradicted McCarthy’s earlier statements.
“There’s no there, there — and in fact, it seems they know there’s no, there, there,” Clinton said. “And sadly, the Speaker of the House is too weak to stand up against the most rabid, you know, walk of his members who don’t care what the truth or facts are.”
It’s worth noting that in 2019, Democrats initiated an impeachment inquiry against former President Donald Trump without holding a floor vote. McCarthy and other Republicans vehemently opposed this unconventional approach. Although Trump was ultimately acquitted in both his second impeachment related to January 6 and his first impeachment, Democrats’ decision to bypass the inquiry vote drew strong criticism from Republicans.
Clinton suggested that the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into Biden was primarily a tactic to “grandstand and create difficulties for President Biden.”
“It’s not a real threat,” Clinton said. “It’s a terrible bother, but more than that, it is a real confession by the Republican Party — they have no agenda, they have no interest in trying to bring people together to solve problems.”
Clinton asserted that House Republicans were deliberately obstructing progress on immigration reform legislation, contending that they were manufacturing political challenges for their own strategic advantage.
“I have said for years because I was in the Senate when I voted for immigration reform as a majority of the Senate did, and George W Bush said he would sign it and the House wouldn’t take it because they don’t want a solution to what’s happening on the border,” she said.
