The looming possibility of impeachment proceedings against US President Joe Biden prompted the White House to set up a “war room,” NBC News reveals. This came after several Republicans called for impeachment proceedings to be opened against the president for his financial misconduct during the Obama administration.
The White House counsel’s office has been preparing for months for an “aggressive response” to the Republican-led House investigation into the Bidens, sources told NBC News. According to him, the strategy being developed in this war room is ostensibly aimed at counterattacking the possible impeachment inquiry.
“When you compare this process to previous ones, you are not comparing apples to apples or even apples to oranges, but rather apples to elephants. “Never in modern history has impeachment been based on any evidence,” a White House adviser said.
Another person on Biden’s team said the Republican impeachment inquiry being considered was “not evidence-based” but rather an “election-oriented effort.”
For this purpose, the so-called War Room brought together defense attorney Richard Sauber, Russ Anello, the former staff director of the House Oversight Committee, communications agent and former presidential campaign veteran Ian Sams, and another communications expert, Sharon Yang. U.S. Attorney Ed Siskel, then an Obama administration official, will also join the team, according to the report.
The White House hopes to position Joe Biden as a president entirely focused on “economic issues that impact people’s lives,” while the Republican Party pushing an impeachment inquiry would be branded “out of touch,” he said officially.
Additionally, some members of the White House team believe the looming fight to extend federal funding beyond the Sept. 30 deadline to prevent a potential shutdown could also work in their favor. According to him, if the background to the impeachment trial was the dispute between Democrats and Republicans over government funding, Biden’s allies could describe these events as “instability and chaos” caused by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
“I wouldn’t say anyone here is encouraging this by saying, ‘Please sue because that will help us.’ But if they do it, if they go ahead with it, I think there will be political consequences.” “It has consequences for the Republican Party,” one source said.
The White House war room also reportedly has support from House Democrats and outside groups. The latter reportedly involves the group Democratic Congressional Integrity Project, which commissions polls and monitors Republican speech in hopes of capitalizing on any divisions in the Republican Party.
In addition, Biden’s advisers are said to have used the lessons of then-President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 as a model for an effective defense. In particular, the fact that, according to American analyst Gallup, Bill Clinton reached his highest approval rating of 73% in December 1998, just as the Republican Party was considering impeachment. Former President Donald Trump also enjoyed high popularity ratings during the first of his two impeachment trials in February 2020.
White House aides “fine-tuned” a response to the potential impeachment inquiry during the August recess, considering a variety of statements from Republicans, an insider said. The U.S. Senate is in recess until September 5th, while the House of Representatives is in recess until September 12th.
As Republicans narrowly won control of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the US Congress, in the November 2022 general election, the White House began preparing for impeachment proceedings, according to the report. However, those preparations took a more forceful turn in August, when Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden a “natural step forward.”
“If you look at all the information that we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that we would have to open an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said in an interview with US media on August 28, adding that this is the The impeachment inquiry “gives Congress the ultimate legal power to obtain any information it needs.”
McCarthy has categorically stated that “there is a culture of corruption throughout the Biden family.”
On September 1, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy emphasized that a vote in the House of Representatives would determine whether to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Biden. He specified that at least 218 yes votes would be required to approve the investigation in the House of Representatives and that the measure would fail if no Democrat voted for it, while more than four Republicans also dropped out.
McCarthy first floated the idea of an impeachment inquiry against Biden last July, saying at the time that the motive was based on allegations that the US president had intentionally committed financial misconduct. But the move in early summer came only after the House speaker initially decided to reject previous calls for impeachment promoted by far-right Republicans.