Former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, took aim on Saturday at his one-time House GOP colleagues over their continuing efforts to launch impeachment efforts against President Joe Biden.
Spurred on largely by further-right members of their caucus, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, House Republicans have been pushing for impeachment proceedings against Biden since he took office in January 2021. Over the years, their basis for the pursuit has generally come to center on allegations that Biden was improperly involved in the business dealings of his family members, especially those of his son, Hunter Biden.
President Biden has denied any and all involvement in his son's business pursuits, and numerous observers and legal experts have dismissed the House GOP's purported findings as insubstantial, irrelevant, and unworthy of impeachment proceedings. Informal impeachment inquiries conducted following the endorsement of former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy have also been criticized for not producing significant evidence of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Nevertheless, the House GOP intends to keep moving forward with the process. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, recently announced plans to bring a vote on formalizing the Biden impeachment inquiry sometime in the coming week.
"The House has no choice if it's going to follow its constitutional responsibility to formally adopt an impeachment inquiry on the floor so that when the subpoenas are challenged in court, we will be at the apex of our constitutional authority," Johnson said in a statement.
In a statement previously sent to Newsweek, the White House dismissed this development and the calls for impeachment from the GOP overall as "sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone's time."
On Saturday, Kinzinger took to X, the platform previously known as Twitter, to lambast an impeachment-related comment from Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican. Kinzinger previously represented Illinois districts from 2011 to 2023, emerging late in his tenure as an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump and the direction that the GOP took under his leadership.
"This is the first time in American history an impeachment inquiry was used for fishing expedition," Kinzinger wrote in his post. "Here is what the 'moderates' [like Lawler] will say to sound 'reasonable' while pleasing the base."
The former congressman's post came in response to a post from Lawler in which he claimed that an inquiry was necessary "to get to the facts" and confirmed that he would be voting in favor of it.
"We aren't at impeachment, but we need to get the facts," the New York congressman wrote. "I'm voting for an inquiry so that we can continue to investigate and see where the evidence leads."
Newsweek reached out to Lawler's office via email for comment.
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Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
