Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned House Republicans against “trivializing” impeachment shortly before news broke that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will call for a vote to open an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.
“My big fear remains that at some point you trivialize this, you make it routine. Suddenly it becomes a weapon or a tool routinely used by a political party against someone from the other party in power,” he told The Hill Monday.
“There are countries like Peru that routinely now impeach whoever the president is, and it’s become almost a national sport,” Rubio added.
Rubio’s comments come alongside a Punchbowl News report that McCarthy will tell House Republicans in a closed-door meeting Thursday that opening an impeachment inquiry is the “logical next step.” Republicans have focused on allegations that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, has used his father’s position as leverage in business deals.
Opening an inquiry would allow House Republicans access to bank records and other documents. However, the ongoing House investigation of Biden has already involved 12,000 pages of bank records, plus 2,000 suspicious activity reports, according to The Hill, with no evidence of wrongdoing.
Though Republicans have a majority in the House, it’s a slim one. This could make it difficult for McCarthy to muster enough votes to even officially open the inquiry, let alone bring articles of impeachment. While there are some outspoken proponents of impeachment, like Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL), not all Republicans are on board. Representative Ken Buck (R-CO), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus—which recently kicked out Greene—has slammed the idea of impeachment.
“What [McCarthy’s] doing is he’s saying, ‘There’s a shiny object over here, and we’re really going to focus on that. We just need to get all these things done so that we can focus on the shiny object,’” Buck told CNN’s Dana Bash in July.
McCarthy is in a precarious position. At the start of this session, a compromise was made after different factions of the Republican party argued over who to name speaker. While the more moderate McCarthy would be named speaker, the House added a new rule allowing any member to call a “motion to vacate.” Once such a motion is called, a vote happens to remove the speaker, according to NBC News. Gaetz has threatened to invoke this should McCarthy not back impeachment, according to Punchbowl.