Does the Freedom Caucus's Impeachment Investigation Carry Water?

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Well, Congress is back in session after its summer recess. They get another whole week after Labor Day while teachers have to jump back in the day after. Now that Congress is at it again, here come high stakes battles right out of the gate brought to you by your friends in the Republican Party's right-wing Freedom Caucus, a possible government shutdown at the end of this month, as much over culture war issues as the deep spending cuts thereafter, and they're now launching a formal impeachment investigation, you've probably heard this, against President Biden, because he did, what again? Well, something with his son Hunter 10 years ago, maybe, that they don't exactly know what it is, and don't have evidence of, but hope to find it if they look hard enough.

Let's see what's happening with Annie Karni congressional correspondent for The New York Times, who has been watching these kinds of things for a while now. She previously was a White House correspondent for The Times. She covered the White House and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign for Politico, and even spent a decade in New York City's tabloid world covering city hall and local politics for The New York Post and The Daily News. Annie, you know what it's like when the circus comes to town and here it comes. Welcome back to WNYC.

Annie Karni: Thank you, Brian. Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take these one at a time, impeachment inquiry, then possible government shutdown when the fiscal year ends at the end of this month. On the impeachment investigation, the theory of the case, because I think a lot of our listeners don't even know that basic, that Joe Biden may have done what that could warrant removal from office, hypothetically.

Annie Karni: First of all, it's not clear what. I think they are hunting for evidence of financial wrongdoing or corruption that he was entwined with Hunter Biden's business dealings when he was vice president, and they have been looking into this since January when they took control of the House. They have found no proof, but the argument that Kevin McCarthy made yesterday in announcing that he's beginning an impeachment inquiry is that they think they have enough information that merits more investigation. This would allow them to issue subpoenas for bank records and give them more power to what they claim is to find that proof in the coming months and bring an impeachment vote to the floor.

The Democrats and the White House think that they can subpoena all they want, there's no there there, and that this is just completely a political motivated thing for McCarthy who has to appease the far right. You said we're going to take these things one by one, but they're really completely intertwined. That wouldn't have happened yesterday if McCarthy wasn't scared of this threat from the far right to oust him, and this is something he can give them to make it look like he's following through on the agenda that they want.

Brian Lehrer: Hold that for a few minutes, the politics within the House Republican caucus and how McCarthy is always teetering on the edge of being removed. You said that McCarthy says they have enough information about Biden to warrant more investigation even if they don't have proof of corruption. What do they have that they've gone public enough with for you to know?

Annie Karni: They say that he has lied about what he knew of Hunter Biden's business dealings at the time, and that there are serious and credible questions about the money that Hunter and other Biden family members made overseas while Biden was sitting in the White House as vice president. Also, they think that there's some sort of special treatment going on in terms of the ongoing criminal tax investigation into Hunter Biden.

They're questioning his conduct, and they think-- McCarthy's word yesterday was that these allegations paint "A picture of culture and corruption." Does this rise to high crimes and misdemeanors? I don't know, but they're saying that it just smells bad, it looks bad, there's corruption here, and that they need to dig further into the Biden family finances to show there's actually a crime.

Brian Lehrer: McCarthy yesterday, as you report, accused Biden of lying about knowledge of his son Hunter's business dealings. Does he refer to any specific business dealings, or from what years, or why would it be bad if Biden did know about what his son was doing in business? There's no crime and knowing what your son is doing at least on its face.

Annie Karni: I'd have to go back and look. I don't have it in front of me. I think what they've said that they've proved is Biden was actually on some calls that he claimed that he had not been on, that this is lying, so that this raises questions about what else he's lying about, what did he know about, what influence was Hunter using to make money by getting his dad on the phone in instances where Biden claimed that he wasn't.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think, by the way, that Biden stumbled into, as he sometimes does, or purposely covered up at least that fact that he was on some phone calls with Hunter having to do with Hunter's business dealings? That doesn't make Biden corrupt, we should say, but is there evidence that he was lying about just that much?

Annie Karni: It's a good question. Biden sometimes makes comments that you fact check them, and then they're not fully true. The question is, is he just this foot and mouth syndrome that he's had his entire political career, or is it actually trying to cover something up? I don't have an answer to that on that particular question, but it is the kind of thing that like, "Did he slip up and exaggerate by accident? Does he forget that he was on the call? Was it intentional?" These are questions that Republicans want to examine.

Brian Lehrer: If McCarthy is using the words corrupt and corruption, what would make something corrupt in this case, Biden with Hunter Biden, if it were proven?

Annie Karni: That's a good question. That is a real hypothetical. If it turned out that Biden was--

Brian Lehrer: Personally benefiting from it, financially, changing government policy to help Hunter Biden.

Annie Karni: Yes. I think that a thing that has frustrated Republicans is that they think they have all of this dirt on Hunter Biden, and that that should be enough to incriminate Joe Biden, but Hunter Biden isn't the president. So far, there's not really a direct link that Joe Biden personally benefited or changed laws or used the government to enrich his family. So far the White House is just completely saying that there's no evidence of wrongdoing, completely saying that they've been investigating for nine months and they have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing at all.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and the Republicans aren't presenting it, at least not--

Annie Karni: Just to show how weak of a case this is, McCarthy had originally said that he would hold a vote on the House floor on whether to begin an impeachment inquiry. He did not end up doing that. He came out yesterday and just announced that they would be doing it. That is because he didn't have the votes and not enough Republicans are convinced that there is evidence to launch an impeachment inquiry. They wouldn't have had the votes to move forward, which is why they scrapped the plan of having a vote on this. That just shows you how weak the argument is at this stage.

Brian Lehrer: Right. They've got a five vote majority in the House of Representatives. You're saying they don't even have all the Republicans on board, with maybe losing four of them, and they'd still have a one vote majority. They don't even have that many Republicans on board to vote to launch an impeachment inquiry.

Annie Karni: That's right. Even members of their own party aren't convinced that this culture of corruption is actually an impeachable crime.

Brian Lehrer: We recall that when Nancy Pelosi as Speaker wanted to bring an impeachment inquiry against Trump without taking a full vote of the House, Kevin McCarthy said, "No, you can't do that." Here's a clip from 2019.

Kevin McCarthy: She cannot change the laws of this Congress. She cannot unilaterally decide we're in an impeachment inquiry.

Brian Lehrer: Oops, he just did what he said a speaker can't do.

Annie Karni: I feel like a lot in politics is like, that was then, and this is now. That was a good argument then, and this is a different circumstance. At the "press conference" yesterday where he announced this inquiry, he took no questions. He ignored that question of why did you say you would have a vote, and then decided not to. The whole thing, it was-- First of all, he had made the announcement at a podium in front of his office at 11:00 AM. It was a hastily scheduled thing that happened because Matt Gates had said he was going to make a big floor speech at noon, castigating McCarthy and setting up the reasons why, eventually, maybe they'd want to oust him from his post.

It looked very reactive. Just the timing, the way it was staged. If you really have evidence of an impeachment inquiry, maybe you'd want to do it in prime time, maybe you'd want to make more of it. It was a hasty, frantic little statement that he made, which again makes it look like he's doing it without a vote. He's doing it out of political pressure on him at that moment. It was what he needed to do yesterday to make it till today.

Brian Lehrer: Another clip of McCarthy from 2019, when Pelosi was Speaker rebuking the impeachment inquiry into then President Trump, and what he said the real job of the House of Representatives is?

Kevin: Our job is to legislate, not to continue to investigate something in the back when you cannot find any reason to impeach this President.

Brian Lehrer: As you say, that was then. I guess voters care about consistency, not very much. Look at-- Before you go, I mean, before you answer, look at Mitch McConnell and how he stopped a Supreme Court nomination when Obama was in his last year in office, but pushed one through when Trump had even less time to go before his term ended. Just chalk up another one to "nothing matters except my party's interest", right?

Annie Karni: Yes, I think that's basically what it is. This argument works for me now. It doesn't make sense to me when the tables are turned. A different argument makes sense. You can go even-- It doesn't even have to stretch that back to find McCarthy quotes that basically make what he's doing now make little sense. During the midterms last year, he tried to tamp down talk about impeaching Biden saying, voters don't like political impeachments. It's very unpopular. He didn't rule it out completely, but he tried to say like, "That's not really a road I would want to go down right now." He wanted to talk about the contract of America, about inflation. Impeachment was not--

Brian Lehrer: A political loser.

Annie Karni: It was a political loser. It was clear then that the pressure on him from the right was going to remain and ratchet up, and here we are.

Brian Lehrer: History, so far at least, proves that political analysis right. Didn't Bill Clinton's popularity go up during those impeachment proceedings? Didn't even Donald Trump's popularity go up during the Ukraine impeachment proceedings?

Annie Karni: They did, and I think that's part of why Nancy Pelosi wanted to hold off for so long on impeaching Trump. She was under the same scenario that McCarthy was last year, where he met progressives on her left who wanted to impeach him because they hated him. You remember, Rashid Al Talib said, "Impeach the mother--" using the exploitive mother f-word. Those comments were not helpful at all to Democrats because it looks like you just want to impeach him as a political tactic. She really waited until there was something very specific to impeach him on, on this phone call. She tried to make it a very narrow impeachment, not just that he's awful, he's corrupt, he's racist, whatever. Still it benefited him politically, arguably. It failed, and he talked about a witch hunt for the rest of his political career.

Brian Lehrer: Even the indictments against Trump in the criminal justice system with so much evidence that we've talked about on this show and elsewhere, he's only becoming more popular, certainly within the Republican Party, each time one of those is announced. There's a meaningful political thread in the American public that says, "Let politics be politics. Don't remove people from office. Don't try to convict them of crimes."

Annie Karni: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Whether that's right or not to think that way. That's the politics that they have to deal with.

Annie Karni: The difference between the indictments and this Biden impeachment is that those indictments are full of facts.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Annie Karni: It could help Trump with this fundraising. It doesn't mean he's not a formidable political figure who could be the next President, but those are facts, and there are no facts presented yet about why Biden committed crimes.

Brian Lehrer: It could yet come back to hurt him, the rash of indictments with all those facts in the general election, but that remains to be seen. Listeners, your call is welcome on the season we're entering in Congress right now. For Annie Karni, covering it for The New York Times on a Biden impeachment inquiry about to begin, on issues that could force the government shutdown when the fiscal year ends on September 30th, on the power of the Freedom Caucus over Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or anything related. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

On the idea of corruption and what would make something corrupt on the part of a President having to do with family business dealings, I'm thinking about Trump and Ivanka and others in his family using his position as President or candidate for President to sell Trump branded everything, and have foreign dignitaries stay at Trump Hotels. That never got called corruption. It did by the Democrats, but using the power of the presidency to leverage business profits and change government policy to help you do it.

Do you remember when Trump first announced he was running for President at Trump Tower? He said, "I love the Saudis. Many are in this building." Then he made pro-Saudi policies, which he implied there had something to do with the fact that they were renting from him or buying from him. When Trump was President, remember when his aide, Kellyanne Conway said, "Go buy Ivanka's stuff. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online." Hello?

Annie Karni: Yes, and not to mention doing campaign events at his properties with free airtime advertisements of the Trump Hotel, what used to be the Trump Hotel here. Yes, go buy Ivanka's stuff was a comment she made from the podium in the White House briefing room with the seal of the White House behind her. I think that Trump never really separated himself from his businesses, never really put it into a trust that he couldn't touch. Yes, he benefited, he and his family, certainly benefited financially from the intermixing of business and politics, but that was not what Democrats chose to impeach him for.

Brian Lehrer: As we continue with Annie Karni, congressional correspondent for The New York Times, on things going on being primarily driven by the far-right Freedom Caucus, having to do with a possible government shutdown at the end of this month, having to do with the impeachment inquiry into President Biden that Speaker Kevin McCarthy said yesterday that he is formally launching. I want to read a text that came in that reflects, I think, what they're going for here politically, Annie, on the impeachment before we move to the government shutdown.

This is a critique from a listener who writes, "To be honest, listening objectively, I feel like I could be listening to Fox News defend Trump right now," meaning the opposite, the mirror of that. "I agree," the listener writes, "that there is no evidence yet, but money and politics has been the most consistent driver of corruption since time immemorial. It's part of the reason that we have billionaires and millionaires as lawmakers when their salaries are only a couple of hundred thousand per year. It's the way media goes to bat for these politicians that has caused millions of people to look for a figure like Trump."

My reaction to that is a lot of what that listener says is absolutely true. Money and politics, the most consistent driver of corruption since time immemorial, part of the reason that we have billionaires and millionaires as lawmakers, but we're talking about starting an impeachment inquiry over, you would think, something that there needs to be evidence for, and the listener acknowledges that there's no evidence and yet they're sympathetic.

Annie Karni: Right. To be clear, there's no direct evidence that Biden won business for Hunter. Aside from him trying to exchange pleasantries with Hunter Biden's associates, there's no evidence that he was involved in really landing business deals. That is pretty important. That's not like liberal media defending a Democratic president. That's just a fact. McCarthy made a false claim saying that these phone calls that Biden was on resulted in millions of dollars for his sons and his business partners. Our discussion is including fact-checking. I don't think that when Fox covers Trump they are involved in fact-checking in the same way. I think what your listener is getting at is that there's disgust with the entire system.

There's a sense that everyone is corrupt. There's a sense that everyone needs to go, and that everyone's in their silos and in their echo chambers, and New York Times reporters are expected to argue one way, and Fox News or reporters are expected to argue another way. The reality is there's just facts here that are not substantiated in terms of what Republicans are claiming President Biden did in terms of launching an impeachment inquiry.

Brian Lehrer: If this listener, or you, or me, or anyone else ask Kevin McCarthy to launch a broad-based set of hearings on the corrupting influence of money and politics-

Annie Karni: Great. Everyone would get behind that.

Brian Lehrer: -most of the legal money in politics, no, he'd never get behind that.

Annie Karni: Right. He wouldn't. That would be a substantial credible congressional investigation. I think the other thing is, right, you say it enough times, and may be the takeaway for a lot of Americans and voters will be like, "Oh, I don't know if he did exactly that, but he must have done something." That's the danger of this inquiry.

Brian Lehrer: Because that listener who texted seems to be coming from the left, I think it's a perfect example of what Naomi Klein was talking about on this show yesterday with her new book, which is that people who are alternative politically, let's say left alternative politically in their instincts are sometimes being driven into the camp of Steve Bannon's podcast, which she writes about a lot in her new book, because it looks like the neoliberal Democrats aren't doing enough to change the system, and then they start becoming suspicious and they start believing in conspiracy theories. That's the premise of that book. I think we saw it in that text.

Annie Karni: I think so.

Brian Lehrer: Manaza in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Manaza.

Manaza: Hi. Good morning. I was listening in this morning and I was thinking this reminds me of-- I'm originally from Pakistan. The political changes that have happened over the last 20 years in the US are driving us towards that situation where you have people believing anything, not believing anything. There's a wide fight between right and left. The problem is that none of the politicians are listening to the street.

They're trying to divide people on both sides, whether it's the Democrats or it's the Republican, and hiding the true facts, which other people are disgusted when they have no jobs, when their economic future doesn't look right, when they cannot send their kids to college because the colleges are-- they're highway robberies right now. There is no good education in areas which need the most.

They're splitting people against each other trying to hide the fact that the ones on the top are skimming all the time. Whenever somebody comes in with these impeachments without any good reason and without any results from that as well, then people who have faith in the justice system, in the political system here also goes down. Now we are at that crossroads where both sides have to sit down and talk about the real issues and talk about why the people are being so polarized.

It is the fault of the media, including New York Times and Fox News. It's not one or the other, the CNNs and the Washington Post. All of them are in it together. They're all responsible for destroying the democratic nation and the welcoming nation that US was. It's no longer. The reason is not because people are bad, it's because our political system has destroyed the system over the last 20 years.

It is because of small political gains that each party wants for themselves. Kevin McCarthy and the Nancy Pelosi all are responsible equally. They cannot shift the blame from one to the other. The latest Biden indictment is the same thing. It's witch-hunting like they did with Trump. If you have proof, then they should have some results on that. If you're just going to badmouth each other publicly and then say, "Oh, we are not going to do anything about it," it's a useless activity. Why even bother?

Brian Lehrer: Manaza, thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate where you're coming from, and please call us again. I think this was your first call to the show. Please call us again, and make your voice heard again. Annie, without necessarily agreeing with everything she said, there's an equivalency in how much one party and the other is doing that. We certainly could could debate that.

I think Manaza's call does highlight something that I think you're probably already talking about at The Times. We're certainly talking about it here, which is in the election cycle, once it really starts in earnest next year, the importance of keeping issues front and center. Not the personal attacks on people's fitness, but the issues that affect American's quality of life really on the ground. In a way, we almost have to pull a lot of the voters back into the issues that affect themselves more directly and out of these tribal passions that the caller is talking about as the main thing that motivates their votes.

Annie Karni: I think that's right. I think also what she got out there while I can't agree with her saying that media outlets like The New York Times are hurting democracy, I think it's the opposite. Her general sense shows why these impeachments are so politically dangerous and why what Democrats did with the first Trump impeachment is now going to probably get-- we're going to have to re-look at that and the entire politics of retribution that happens in the House. Like Democrats remove Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees last Congress, and this Congress, Kevin McCarthy removes Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar from committees.

They're very different circumstances that led to those removals. One could argue that some are justified and some are just completely not. For many voters watching, it looks like vengeance, retribution, ugly personal vendettas, and they come away with this feeling that everyone is corrupt and to blame. I think that's probably not correct. It's one of the pitfalls of using Congress like this. It's why it's unpopular. It's why Pelosi wanted to hold it off for so long. People don't like it. People don't like politicians acting this way.

Brian Lehrer: Like with the listener who texted, that caller comes down, in my opinion, with a false equivalency when she equates The New York Times on one side with Fox News on the other, but it's, as I see it, a function of all the disinformation that certain people are putting out that leads people to throw up their hands and come to that I think incorrect-

Annie Karni: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: -but easy conclusion. Part of the political scenario here is that far-right Congressman Matt Gaetz, as you started to describe before, says he will begin every legislative day with snap votes to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker. What are Matt Gaetz and his allies in that wing of the party so unhappy about with McCarthy or trying to pressure him to do in addition to the impeachment inquiry?

Annie Karni: Matt Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus basically think that they own Kevin McCarthy because of the drama we witnessed in January where it took 5 days and 15 votes for Kevin McCarthy to even become the speaker. It was because of-- he finally got it because all of these concessions he made to them. They feel like he has not followed through with the promises that were made that week.

They think that he-- In terms of budget issues, they think that the debt ceiling bill that he cut with President Biden didn't cut government funding in a way that they had agreed to. They are livid about that agreement. Now, they are basically saying that if he doesn't follow through with-- If they don't cut funding substantially, they are not going to fund the government right now. What Matt Gaetz said yesterday is a few things that he says McCarthy promised him more investigations into the Biden family, released the footage from the January 6th attack, votes on balanced budgets. He's claiming that-- oh, and scrap the budget deal that McCarthy made with Biden. He's saying if he doesn't do all those things, then time's up, we're going to finally oust you because you are not complying with the agreement we made to support you in the first place

Brian Lehrer: Try to get a more activist conservative in as a speaker. What kinds of spending cuts are they aiming for? For what kinds of government programs, primarily?

Annie Karni: They haven't passed any of their 12 appropriations bills. They want funding substantially across the board. They are right now, most pressing, is that these hard right members say they won't even vote for a temporary measure that would fund the government just briefly to avoid a government shutdown that would begin October 1st. That's looking very likely right now.

Brian Lehrer: Are they saying what spending cuts would be in the interest of their constituents? like, let's say, largely white working-class constituencies who would have a better quality of life with less government rather than the programs that exist today, many of which serve them?

Annie Karni: They want spending cuts across the board, but they also-- Another issue is that a bunch of these spending bills have been laden with culture issues and abortion restrictions, things that will never pass in the Senate. It's a combination of not wanting to fund certain departments that make certain abortion-related drugs, or in the defense bill, they wanted to limit the rights of service members to travel to get an abortion. It's a combination of just fundamentally believing that the government needs to spend less, and putting in these culture war social issues throughout all these bills.

Brian Lehrer: I read a statement from the Freedom Caucus a few weeks ago that said any budget bills needed to address border security plus what they call the unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI, that's obviously in defense of Trump, and "and the lefts cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military's core warfighting mission." Leaving that Pentagon discussion aside, and by the way, listeners, I refer you to our recent conversation with the Secretary of the Army when I asked her if the Army was woke, but we're going to hear about the border. Do they have a strong wedge issue in the border right now, which they probably want to spend more money on defending, but with Democrats divided against themselves and against Biden and New York and other cities?

Annie Karni: They want more border controls, but the bigger issue here is nothing of what they want has any realistic chance of passing when the Democrats control the Senate and the White House. They have no path to becoming law or getting signed into law. I think that McCarthy is trying to tie the impeachment issue to the government funding issue, arguing that if we have a government shutdown, we will be hampered in pursuing our impeachment inquiry, and hoping that carry some water with the right. So far as we saw from Gaetz yesterday, it didn't appease them at all.

Brian Lehrer: This is just after one day. [laughs]

Annie Karni: One day back.

Brian Lehrer: The fall session of Congress. Watch this space, and Annie-- Go ahead.

Annie Karni: I think we should expect it to be like this every day for the next four weeks.

Brian Lehrer: Annie Karni covers Congress for The New York Times. Sounds like your life won't be boring in the coming weeks. Thank you very much, Annie.

Annie Karni: Thank you.

 

 

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