Former Georgia GOP Rep. Bob Barr, one of the House managers in former President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment, is advising House Republicans to go slow as they seek Biden administration impeachments.
In an interview, Barr described impeachment articles, such as those filed this week against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas by Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX), as an “overreaction,” especially since Democrats control the Senate.
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“The process of impeachment has been basically devalued in recent years since the Clinton impeachment, which was for, in my view, very specific violations of criminal law by a sitting president, into a political tool to simply go after a president and now others for policy disagreements,” Barr told the Washington Examiner. “That’s a misuse of impeachment, and it’s going to undercut the value of impeachment even more. And it’s going to detract from what the new majority ought to be doing, and that is tackling the systemic problem with these government agencies and not simply going after the individuals.”
Instead, Barr recommended that the House Oversight Committee and the other Republican-led standing committees, including the chamber’s judiciary panel, investigate the overriding problem of “the systemic abuse by government of citizens’ individual liberty.” He cited the judiciary subcommittee on the “weaponization of the federal government,” which the House approved in a party-line vote Tuesday, as one good example.
“It’s a lot easier, particularly when you have only two years and you want to grab a bunch of headlines and you want to weaken your political opponents — it’s a lot easier to do what they’re now talking about,” he said of the impeachments. “Impeachment is easy. Going after and solving the systemic problems with the federal government and particularly our law enforcement agencies is a lot more difficult.”
Fallon followed through on House Republican promises to pursue Mayorkas’s impeachment, claiming he has undermined “operational control” of the southern border and encouraged illegal immigration. Mayorkas has downplayed the possibility of his impeachment, declining to resign while conceding he has “a lot of work to do.”
Barr was an early adopter on impeaching Clinton, spearheading a resolution calling for an impeachment inquiry as far back as 1997, before independent counsel Kenneth Starr released his report.
Republican leaders were initially unenthusiastic. “I don’t think we have the kind of evidentiary basis to be talking about impeachment at this time,” then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, said at the time. “An impeachment proceeding must be bipartisan in the final analysis,” then-House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, said.
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Clinton was impeached by the House in 1998 for lying under oath and for obstructing justice after Starr’s investigation underscored his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted of all impeachment charges after a 21-day Senate trial.
