On Thursday, far right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) announced that she would soon be filing articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.
Greene, a loyalist to former President Donald Trump who voted against his impeachment in early 2021, claimed in her announcement that Biden has refused to enforce the U.S.’s immigration laws — despite the fact that Biden has not only continued many of Trump’s cruel anti-immigration policies, but expanded upon them.
“It is with the highest amount of solemnity that I announce my intention to introduce articles of impeachment today on the head of this America-last executive branch, that has been working since Jan. 20, 2021, to systematically destroy this country, the president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden,” Greene said in a statement.
Greene’s statement did not specify how Biden violated his oath of office. That oath, which each chief executive of the United States is constitutionally required to recite, reads as follows:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Rules on impeaching a president are somewhat broad. Congress may vote to impeach the head of the executive branch and/or their officers if they have committed acts of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” according to Article II of the U.S. Constitution.
The latter part of that clause — “high crimes and misdemeanors” — was defined at the time it was adopted as a general abuse of power while in office. But in defending against Trump’s two impeachments, Republican-aligned legal scholars wrongly claimed that the words should be interpreted literally.
Since Biden has taken office, however, far right figures like Greene appear to approve of adopting the original standard.
Legal experts have said that Greene’s attempts to impeach Biden are unwarranted and based on false claims.
Despite Greene’s claims that Biden has refused to enforce U.S. immigration law, Biden has largely continued Trump’s inhumane anti-immigration policies — and in many cases, gone even further, implementing new restrictions on asylum seekers that human rights advocates have condemned as a cruel violation of international law.
“The Biden administration has swiftly replaced the unlawful and restrictive [Trump-era Title 42] immigration policy with a near-total asylum ban that will turbocharge the deportation of migrants who cross the border from Mexico into the U.S.,” said Camilo Pérez-Bustillo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and a member of the leadership team at Witness at the Border, in an op-ed for Truthout earlier this month. “This is combined with intensified militarization of the border and unprecedented steps to expand enforcement and deterrence measures throughout Latin America, from Guatemala to Colombia.”
Tellingly, Greene has also filed articles of impeachment against other Biden administration officials — four in the last week alone, not counting the one she plans for the president. These filings include impeachment articles against Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.; Christopher Wray, the current director of the FBI; Attorney General Merrick Garland; and Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
This isn’t even the first time Greene has filed articles of impeachment against Biden. In her first action ever as a member of Congress, Greene filed an impeachment resolution against Biden — on January 21, 2021, his second day in the White House.
Within that resolution, Greene made baseless claims that Biden “interfered with the peaceful transition of power” and “threatened the integrity of the democratic system” of the United States.
With such a narrow Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s unlikely that Greene’s resolutions — against Biden or any other executive branch official — will go anywhere. Even if she does somehow succeed in convincing enough GOP lawmakers to go along with her impeachments, they will likely be blocked in the U.S. Senate, where two-thirds of the legislative body is needed to remove Biden from office. Currently, Democrats and their independent allies have a 51-49 seat control over that chamber.
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