Impeachment effort failing? HEY Just look over here....

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While House Republicans struggle to find hard evidence for impeaching President Biden over his family members’ business dealings, it’s their probe of the Afghanistan withdrawal that could be the most damaging House investigation for the president. House Republicans are holding another hearing on the topic today, drawing attention to the chaotic withdrawal of more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan in 2021. In this election year, it’s expected to be contentious.

The politics of the withdrawal​

The withdrawal after 20 years of U.S. troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan was chaotic, to say the least. House Republicans, led by Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (Tex.), have been investigating since gaining the majority in the 2022 midterms. The withdrawal was a pivotal point in Biden’s presidency he has struggled to recover from. His job approval rating before it was above water, around 50 percent, according to a Washington Post review of polling. But afterwards, his disapproval numbers exceeded his approval numbers. That hasn’t turned around.

The committee includes some of the most outspoken Republicans, some of whom are expected to politicize the hearing and create fireworks.

It continues to be a political challenge for the president. Steve Nikoui, the father of Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, a Marine who was one of the 13 soldiers who died during the evacuation, heckled the president at the State of the Union. Some family members of the 13 service members are expected to attend the hearing, a person familiar with the planning said.

• “I think the reason he’s never recovered is because nobody has ever been held accountable,” Kelley Currie, a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center and former U.S. representative to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women during the Trump administration.

Republicans on the committee released an interim report last year and plan to release a final report in August, on or near the third anniversary of the withdrawal and less than three months from the presidential election. But Democrats say Biden’s opponent in 2024 — former president Donald Trump — set the timeline for withdrawal, entered into an agreement with the Taliban and is as much to blame. They’ll focus on that in the hearing today.

• “The Committee has also learned, in contrast to the Republicans’ framing of our withdrawal, that President Trump’s Doha Deal with the Taliban emboldened the Taliban and led to the Afghan government’s precipitous collapse,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement to The Earlyt, referencing the agreement signed in February 2020 that called for the U.S. military’s withdrawal within 14 months.
• Democrats will also defend the president and the Biden administration’s transparency during the House investigation.
  
  • “The over 100 hours of closed-door testimony, multiple public hearings, and 11,000 pages of documents produced to the Committee have reinforced that the administration had a comprehensive plan to successfully airlift over 124,000 people out of Afghanistan, despite the dynamic situation caused by the Afghan government’s collapse,” Meeks said in a statement.
  The State Department released a scathing after-action report in the summer, saying Biden and Trump failed to assess how the U.S. withdrawal would destabilize the Afghan government.
  
  On the campaign trail, Trump rarely criticizes Biden over his Afghanistan withdrawal ― if he mentions it at all.

Today’s hearing will feature testimony from Mark A. Milley, the general who retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September.


Milley is returning to testify because he thinks it’s important to explain the military decisions behind the withdrawal to the public, those who served in Afghanistan and families who lost loved ones, a person close to him said. Retired Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., who led U.S. Central Command, will also testify.

While top Defense Department officials are testifying today, McCaul is expected to focus this hearing on the State Department, which he says is responsible for the messy withdrawal. He hopes the former generals provide insight into State’s role and whether it fell short, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

• “Our investigation has uncovered repeated instances of White House refusing to listen to warnings about the situation on the ground in the country,” McCaul is expected to say, according to prepared remarks, though he could deviate from them.

Milley is prepared to delve into the timing of the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, a critical moment in the withdrawal that has been a point of contention in the aftermath. He is expected to say that the military executes plans for embassy evacuations but doesn’t craft them.

 

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Now it's gonna be "criminal referrals"

 

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Now it's gonna be "criminal referrals"

Now its going to be jail for Comer

 

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Senate kills both impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas​

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted to deem both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas unconstitutional, killing the charges against the top Biden administration official despite protests from Republican lawmakers. The Senate rejected the article accusing Mayorkas of "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" on a 51-48 vote. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, voted "present," splitting from her fellow Republicans. The Senate dropped the second charge that Mayorkas oversaw a "breach of public trust" in a 51-49 vote.

The White House immediately applauded the move. Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations called the proceedings a "baseless impeachment that even conservative legal scholars said was unconstitutional."

Mia Ehrenberg, DHS spokesperson, said in a statement on Wednesday: “As he has done throughout more than 20 years of dedicated public service, Secretary Mayorkas will continue working every day to enforce our laws and protect our country."

"It’s time for Congressional Republicans to support the Department’s vital mission instead of wasting time playing political games and standing in the way of commonsense, bipartisan border reforms," she added. Before the Senate rejected the charges against Mayorkas, Republicans attempted to draw out the votes by setting up multiple procedural hurdles, such as calling to adjourn until the end of the month or, in one case, until after the 2024 presidential election. But each of those were overruled by the narrow Democratic majority, and the upper chamber adjourned the proceedings after just a few hours. But as the chamber met to consider the House's impeachment of Mayorkas, Republicans and Democrats agreed on one thing – it was a historic moment.

Democrats panned the Republican House's effort as a remarkable misuse of impeachment powers that could have undermined America's system of checks and balances. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said earlier in the day that his chamber was meeting to consider an impeachment for the third time in four years – the first two being impeachments of former President Donald Trump.

But "this time, Senators will preside as jurors in the least legitimate, least substantive, and most politicized impeachment trial in the history of the United States," Schumer said. "The charges brought against Secretary Mayorkas fail to meet the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors. To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future," Schumer said.

The constitution sets "high crimes and misdemeanors" as the general bar for impeaching an official. Senate Democrats, who control the chamber by just one seat, voted that the articles didn't meet that bar. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans argued that Democrats were making a major mistake by pushing to dismiss the trial before it even began. Their GOP colleagues in the House charged Mayorkas with betraying the public trust and violating the Constitution by "willfully and systemically" refusing to enforce border security laws.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., argued it was the Senate's duty to at least consider the House's charges. After the upper chamber voted, the top Republican said that "today is not a proud day in the history of the Senate."

"By doing what we just did, we have in effect ignored the directions of the House which were to have a trial. No evidence, no procedure," he added.

 

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