Democrats, whom critics claim have used the impeachment process and special counsels to undermine former President Trump, should not be shocked by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's announcement of an inquiry into President Biden's alleged influence peddling, a former top Bush aide told FOX News.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Biden, citing "serious and credible allegations into President Biden's conduct." The impeachment process had only been used twice in the first 222 years of the union – against Democratic Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton – until Democrats impeached Trump twice during his four years in office.
"Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats set the precedent here," former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen said on "The Story." "Let's put aside the merits of this impeachment inquiry for a second: What did Democrats think was going to happen?"
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Thiessen said Pelosi, D-Calif., and her party overtly and overly abused political and judicial institutions for years as a means of attacking their chief opponent, Trump.
The Trump-Russia collusion probe turned out to be based on a "conspiracy theory" and while Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – which included language suggesting the European leader take a look into the Biden family's activity in the country – was "shameful," it was not explicitly impeachable, he argued.
Thiessen said the most recent example of Democrats' hypocrisy in crying foul over the use of legislative levers like impeachment against the leader of their party is the fact the U.S. Senate acquitted Trump of the very criminal allegations Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis charged Trump with in regard to the Jan. 6 riots.
There is one lawsuit – launched in Colorado – has also sought to remove Trump from the ballot on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment's insurrection clause – an idea forwarded by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and former George H.W. Bush-appointed federal Judge J. Michael Luttig.
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"All these things that they've done: Did they think that there was not going to be any blowback? Did they think that the Republicans were not going to turn around and say, 'OK, you've set the precedent, we're going to use these all these tools … against you?" Thiessen asked.
He added that, in the reverse context, Democrats are also using the government's powers to "protect" President Biden and his son Hunter from criminal scrutiny, citing the widely-criticized investigation being led by Delaware federal prosecutor-turned-Special Counsel David Weiss.
Thiessen noted abnormal behavior from Hunter's team and federal prosecutor's office reached such a level that a Wilmington federal judge rebuked both sides.
"So Republicans are looking at this and saying -- 'They're using these institutions. This is fair game,'" he said. "And two, 'We don't trust the institutions anymore, so we need the tools of an impeachment inquiry to go after to to to get to the bottom of this story' -- which is a legitimate inquiry as to whether or not there was corruption in the Biden family."
White House spokesman for oversight and investigations Ian Sams told "The Story" that opening an impeachment inquiry with zero evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden is simply red meat for the extreme rightwing, so they can keep baselessly attacking him."
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