Republican Senator Admits There’s “No Evidence”on Biden Impeachment

Senator Chuck Grassley admitted on Wednesday that House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden hasn’t produced any facts pointing to wrongdoing on the president’s part.

“I have no evidence of it,” Grassley told CNN, just hours before House Republicans were set to vote to formalize the Biden impeachment inquiry. “I’m just going to follow the facts where they are, and the facts haven’t taken me to that point where I can say the president is guilty of anything.”

The probe into Biden, which was sparked by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in September and based on debunked claims, initially went ahead without a floor vote and failed to produce even one witness who could say Joe Biden did anything illegal. Republicans repeatedly tried and failed to tie the president to the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden.

The House is slated to cast a floor vote sometime on Wednesday to formalize the impeachment proceedings into Joe Biden, though it’s expected to be close. The lower chamber’s already slim conservative majority was squeezed even tighter earlier this month after New York Representative George Santos was expelled from the chamber. The disgraced politician’s absence means that the party can only afford to lose three Republicans on any given vote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Christian fundamentalism is even too much for his own family, who say that the leader of the House’s religiosity has stood between them and environmental aid, citing an instance nine years ago when Johnson outright rejected their cry for help regarding a toxic burn site just miles away from their family home.

In 2014, the future speaker’s father, Patrick Johnson, and his wife, Janis Gabriel, both turned staunch environmental activists after the elder Johnson survived a near-fatal industrial explosion, visited his son’s legal office with a plea: Stop a government-backed burn of 15 million pounds’ worth of toxic munitions at Camp Minden.

But Johnson wouldn’t hear them out, according to Gabriel. “His father and I went to him and said: ‘Mike you need to get involved in this, this is really important. Your family really lives at ground zero,’” Gabriel told The Guardian. “We basically begged him to say something, to someone, somewhere.”

Johnson, who was a prominent right-wing lawyer at the time, wouldn’t budge.

“It just blew my mind that he wouldn’t give five minutes of his time to the effort,” she said. “He basically shut us down.”

According to Gabriel, Johnson has never been interested in environmental causes—a political preference due to his creationist beliefs, which lead him to think that climate change is a function of the planet’s shifting cycles rather than a manmade crisis.

“The climate is changing, but the question is: Is the climate changing because of the natural cycles of the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs?” Johnson said to the sound of boos during a town hall in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2017. “I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”

The elder Johnson, who passed away in 2016, “certainly didn’t agree” with Mike Johnson’s “extremist stance” on Christianity, Gabriel said. The father and son also disagreed on Donald Trump.

Gabriel explained that her impetus for speaking with the outlet was to elucidate “what and who he is and how that will affect the job he’s doing for us,” and noted that she believed it was Johnson’s extreme faith that led him to spurn his father’s cry for help over the air pollution crisis in the representative’s congressional district.

“It speaks to those religious beliefs,” Gabriel told The Guardian. “‘Don’t take care of the environment because we have a finite amount of time here and God will take care of you.’ It’s crazy.”

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that would decide the fate of the “abortion pill.”

It will be the biggest reproductive rights case that the court’s conservative supermajority has seen since it overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

At stake is access to a drug called mifepristone, which, along with misoprostol, comprises one-half of a two-pill prescription jointly referred to as “the abortion pill.” Together, they account for more than half of all the abortions in the United States, according to a 2022 report by the Guttmacher Institute.

In April, a Trump-appointed judge in a lower court halted access to the drug. Four months later, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs, the right-wing Christian organization Alliance Defending Freedom, ruling that while the pill was safe for market, the Food and Drug Administration had overstepped its role by taking several steps that expanded access to the drug in 2016. That included allowing women to access it 10 weeks into pregnancy instead of seven, lowering the standard dosage, and allowing the prescription to be accessed via telemedicine.

Until now, none of those changes have been felt thanks to a Supreme Court stay on the case. But now that the nation’s highest court has decided to review it, that could change.

And the Christian legal group leading the charge against mifepristone would like to see more than just a few nicks to its access—instead, it’s aiming for a complete ban that questions the FDA’s initial approval of the drug in 2000, according to court filings.

A decision in the case is expected by summer.

The chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, is apparently afraid to go up against even the mildest of criticism as he pushes the GOP forward with a symbolic impeachment vote of Joe Biden, telling Newsmax host Eric Bolling that he won’t even dare to go on Fox.

On Monday, Fox anchor Steve Doocy suggested on Fox & Friends that the probe, which hasn’t produced one fact witness who could say Joe Biden did anything illegal and has tried and failed to tie the president into the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden, was meritless.

“They’ve connected the dots, the Department of Justice did, on Hunter, but they have not shown where Joe Biden, you know, did anything illegally,” Doocy said on the network before being harangued by his colleagues.

Thanks to that tiny hole in the conservative safety net that is Fox News, Comer jumped ship to Newsmax on Wednesday, claiming that Doocy’s dissenting opinion is too threatening.

“He’s had that position from the very beginning,” Comer told Bolling. “I’ve quit going on Fox & Friends because of Doocy, you know? I mean, he’s the one guy on Fox that’s been very critical of the investigation. I have my theory why, and we’ll talk about that at a later point, but at the end of the day, he’s entitled to his opinion, but I don’t think the average viewer of Fox News agrees with Doocy one bit.”

But if Comer is too afraid to face down Fox News for even the mildest bout of criticism, what does that mean for the actual impeachment proceedings, which Republicans seemingly want to keep in the dark?

Last week, the caucus threatened to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if he refused to appear for a closed door deposition, despite the president’s son’s previously voiced preference for a public hearing, fearing that information from those interviews would be selectively leaked and used to “manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public.”

The House is expected to cast a floor vote sometime on Wednesday to formalize the impeachment proceedings into Joe Biden.

House Speaker Mike Johnson once warned about the exact impeachment strategy his party is now pursuing against Joe Biden.

In a video from 2019 recently resurfaced by MSNBC, Johnson raises concerns about Democrats opening an impeachment inquiry against Trump along party lines, as well as an impeachment happening within a year of a presidential election.

Johnson also warned that the Founding Fathers would have been against Trump’s impeachment because they believed a “single-party impeachment” would divide Americans.

“The Founding Fathers warned us,” Johnson said in 2019.

The House plans on authorizing Biden’s impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.

Republicans are doubling down on their removal of the phrase “open and transparent” from a proposed resolution to impeach President Joe Biden, continuing to defend a move that by all means looks like an effort to keep the American people in the dark and out of a legal challenge to the nation’s highest elected official.

Republicans on the House Rules Committee on Tuesday voted against adding the clause back into their impeachment rules.

A senior House Republican aide identified with House Speaker Mike Johnson previously said that the term was excluded from the resolution on the basis that it was “too wordy,” according to USA Today.

But Democrats got feisty about that, pointing toward their 2019 impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, which didn’t just include the phrase in its text but utilized it as a header to front a section explaining the proceedings.

“My point is that at the impeachment inquiry phase, when we took that vote, from then on, everything was public, which is why the resolution was structured as such,” said Colorado Representative Joe Neguse. “In this instance, Republicans have removed it, and it’s clear that they don’t intend to have a public process.”

Neguse also highlighted that Republicans’ impeachment rules, as currently written, don’t require a single public hearing.

The blatant dismissal of the phrase seems more akin to shirking responsibility for a transparent proceeding, despite aggressive Republican signaling otherwise.

On Tuesday, Republican Representative Guy Reschenthaler claimed the inquiry was inherently transparent because “you can’t turn on a news program” without seeing Representatives Jim Jordan or House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer discussing the investigation.

It’s not the only aspect of the inquiry in which Republicans are insisting on discretion. Last week, the caucus threatened to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress if he refused to appear for a closed-door deposition, despite the president’s son’s previously voiced preference for a public hearing, fearing that information from those interviews would be selectively leaked and used to “manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public.”

Congressional interns are calling their bosses out, accusing the rank and file of Capitol Hill of downplaying constituent calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, claiming that hundreds of thousands of messages from U.S. citizens and staff have gone “unnoticed and unheard.”

In an open letter signed by 140 interns and fellows working for Democratic and Republican offices, the collective noted that congressional phone lines and inboxes have been more than overwhelmed with messages calling for an immediate cease-fire. In just 71 of 535 congressional offices, constituents placed more than 693,170 calls, letters, and voice messages demanding a cease-fire, according to the group.

“We believe Israel, like any nation, has the right to defend itself and its people. However, there is no justification for the wanton killing of innocent civilians. There is no justification for intentionally bombing hospitals, shelters, water supplies, religious sites, or schools. This is no longer an act of defense. It is genocide,” the letter read.

“While we refrain from telling our bosses how to do their jobs, as congressional interns and fellows, we owe it to the American people to expose the patent malpractice of Congress. We can no longer stand by while the voices of constituents are suppressed and ignored by their elected officials,” they added, avoiding naming themselves for fear of career retaliation.

The interns also noted that some members of Congress have not been “adequately briefed” about the volume or contents of the messages and that despite congressional inaction, they would do “everything in our power to ensure a permanent ceasefire is achieved.”

“To diminish the intelligence of people who support a ceasefire, to blatantly spread misinformation within the office about the conflict, and to actively make other staff feel uncomfortable is appalling,” read one testimonial included in the letter. “There is a clear disconnect between what the American public wants and what their representatives are doing.”

This isn’t the first report that members of Congress are ignoring constituent calls for a ceasefire. Last month, a HuffPost report found that several Democratic lawmakers explicitly told their staff to let the ringing go to voicemail. At the time, one staffer said the calls don’t “stop ringing at any point in the day.”

Sixty-one percent of all likely voters support a cease-fire and calls for the deescalation of violence in Gaza, according to a December 5 Data for Progress poll. That same poll found that the majority of respondents (63 percent), including Republicans, felt that Israel should only receive more aid under the condition that it meets a U.S. standard for human rights.

Meanwhile, only 11 percent of Congress feels the same, with just 61 lawmakers having issued statements calling for a cease-fire.

At least 18,412 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, and 1.7 million people (or 81 percent of the total population) have been displaced, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations.

Rudy Giuliani just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

The former Trump attorney got grilled by a federal judge on Tuesday, who argued that Giuliani’s post-court tirade, during which he espoused more of the 2020 election lies that he’s on the stand for to begin with, could warrant more defamation charges.

America’s mayor is currently on trial to determine how many millions he owes a pair of Georgia poll workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Giuliani was already found liable in August for defaming them after he accused the duo of manipulating ballots—claims that transformed into months of harassment, death threats, and protesters at their doorsteps.

Outside the courthouse on Monday, the very first day after his trial, Giuliani told a gaggle of reporters that he still stands by those claims.

“Of course I don’t regret it, I told the truth,” Giuliani said. “They were engaged in changing votes.”

“When I testify, the whole story will be definitively clear that what I said was true, and that, whatever happened to them—which is unfortunate about other people overreacting—everything I said about them is true,” he added.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell was incensed by the accusations, which flew in the face of part of Giuliani’s defense, which argued that Freeman and Moss were “good people” who did not deserve what happened to them. Even Giuliani’s attorney, Joe Sibley, had a hard time defending his client’s behavior, admitting that the two statements were not “reconcilable” before blaming Giuliani’s inflammatory comments on the 79-year-old’s age.

“Was Mr. Giuliani just playing for the cameras?” Howell asked Sibley on Tuesday, noting that his recent comments “could support another defamation claim.”

It may be a supernova blast in the limelight for America’s disgraced mayor, whose star is quickly dying amid a flurry of legal charges that have all but bankrupted him. After this expensive trial, Giuliani will be one of 19 co-defendants in the Fulton County election interference case in which he stands accused of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” in Georgia that pressured state officials to reverse Trump’s election loss.

But Giuliani may be undone even before he’s handed a sentence. In September, the criminal defendant was sued by his former legal representation for failing to pay his bill, allegedly only dishing out $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses, after he claimed he was stiffed by his favorite client, Trump, to the tune of millions of dollars.

It should serve as a lesson to even the closest of Trump’s allies: There’s no thanks for helping the real estate mogul. Despite the bad blood, Giuliani apparently had no other option than to beg Trump for help settling his seven-figure legal fees, to which the stingy developer refused but offered to throw a couple of fundraisers for him instead.

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz was recently surprised with an award at an Ohio GOP event, congratulating him for his dedication to using Venmo to allegedly pay underage girls for sex.

On a livestream of the Strongsville Republican Party’s Christmas gathering, which took place Thursday, a man who introduced himself as “Mike with the Strongsville GOP” went on stage and invited Gaetz to join him. He then presented the 2023 Strongsville GOP award and offered the odd congratulations to Gaetz.

“Congratulations for your dedication to using Venmo to allegedly pay underage girls to have sex with you,” the presenter said, catching Gaetz off guard.

“Oh come on man, you’re so full of it,” Gaetz replied, as he continued to awkwardly hold the award in his hand. Police immediately escorted the presenter away.

The Department of Justice decided in February that it would not charge Gaetz after its sex-trafficking investigation. But since then, the House Ethics Committee has reopened its own investigation into Gaetz—looking at the Florida congressman’s alleged sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and other misconduct.

The Daily Beast reported in 2021 that the congressman had paid a 17-year-old girl as well as accused sex trafficker Joel Greenberg through Venmo. Greenberg, an associate of Gaetz’s and at the center of the DOJ investigation, pleaded guilty the next month on charges ranging from falsifying identification to the sex trafficking of a child. He was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison.

Two-thirds of Republicans apparently have no problem with reelecting someone who attempted to overthrow the government.

Just 31 percent of Republicans would not vote for Donald Trump if he was convicted before Election Day 2024, according to a new Reuters/IPSOS poll.

That’s a drastically lower number than recorded in August, when nearly half of polled Republicans said that the vote for Trump was a no-go if the GOP front-runner was “convicted of a felony crime by a jury.” In that same poll, just 35 percent of Republicans said they would continue to support him even if he was found guilty of a crime, while the remaining 20 percent said they were undecided.

While lacking nearly a third of the Republican vote could be enough to sink Trump, the shrinking figure paints a foreboding picture ahead of next November.

Trump currently faces 91 charges across four criminal cases: the federal election interference case, the Georgia election interference case, the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and the Stormy Daniels case in which Trump is accused of using his fixer Michael Cohen to falsify business documents to quietly pay off the porn actress ahead of the 2016 election.

And while Republicans’ preference for Trump seems to fly in the face of his criminal trials, there’s a reason for their madness—fewer than a quarter actually believe the accusations.

And yet the presidential race is currently neck and neck. In a general election Morning Consult poll published Sunday, Trump pulled 43 percent of the vote while Biden lagged slightly behind at 41 percent.

Some of that dwindling support behind the incumbent is due to Biden’s recent policy decisions at home and abroad. On Friday, the Biden administration signaled to Republicans that it was open to a swath of Democrat-opposed border policies, including some that were previously tried by Donald Trump, for instance adding 12,000 beds to detention centers in an apparent attempt to compromise on a Republican proposal to detain asylum-seekers instead of releasing them with a court date.

Biden has also upset young voters and people of color—who clinched his 2020 win—with his unwavering support of Israel amid the escalating conflict between the Middle Eastern country and Gaza, where at least 18,412 Palestinians have been killed and 1.7 million people (or 81 percent of the total population) have been displaced since the war began on October 7, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations.