Amid threats by Nancy Pelosi to impeach President Trump for his Supreme Court nomination, the conservative House Freedom Caucus last week forced a meeting of the House’s entire Republican conference to discuss a motion to “vacate the chair,” forcing her to step down as House speaker.
In a statement on Twitter, the Freedom Caucus said Pelosi’s “latest impeachment threat is proof she would rather use her post as speaker to weaponize the chamber than as a means of accomplishing anything of substance for the country.”
“She must be removed from the speakership immediately.”
NEW: @SpeakerPelosi‘s latest impeachment threat is proof she would rather use her post as speaker to weaponize the chamber than as a means of accomplishing anything of substance for the country. She must be removed from the speakership immediately.https://t.co/CqSmYsFchZ
— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) September 22, 2020
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said in a podcast interview with the Daily Signal the effort has been developing for several months and the most recent discussion was whether the timing was right.
The momentum has increased, he explained, because of “this notion that she would even allow the suggestion of impeachment of the president for engaging in his constitutional prerogative, not just prerogative, but his obligation.”
Pelosi has threatened to impeach the president for not allowing the man selected by voters on Nov. 3 to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court resulting from the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“The American people elected him to be the president of the United States for a full four years, and part of his duty is to fill Supreme Court vacancies,” Biggs said of Trump. “And so, this notion that you would impeach him for doing a constitutionally required duty, which is just a step too far, and then her rhetoric in the recent couple of weeks has just been absolutely abysmal and demeaning to the institution. So, that was the last straw.”
Pelosi orchestrated the impeachment of Trump last winter that resulted in his acquittal by the Republican-majority Senate.
Biggs said the Democrats want to do “anything” to stop the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the high court.
“I mean, you have a really, really qualified individual, but what [Pelosi’s] wanting to do is even though the House has, virtually, nothing to do with the advice and consent, we just are observers, … she said it, basically, that she wanted to create a distraction, a distraction for this administration,” Biggs said.
“I would tell you that there’s largely consensus in the body that she needs to be removed. And if she actually does try to go through with any of this, the minority leader has said that he will make that motion posthaste, which is a privileged motion. So, it would get immediate attention,” Biggs said. “It’s despicable that they would attempt to use impeachment. I mean, what they did last time was impeachment because they don’t like the president. This time, they would use it as a distraction, because they don’t like the fact that he got to appoint [Judge] Amy Coney Barrett.”
Biggs said the process is that the minority leader would file a motion with the clerk and bring up immediately a privileged motion to vacate, which takes precedence over other business.
“What would happen at that point is that we anticipate any ways that the Democrats would move to table or to set that motion to vacate aside, and we would then have a motion on that. That would be the telling motion. That would be effectively saying you support Pelosi or you don’t support Pelosi, you support the removal or you don’t support the removal, all in that motion to table,” the congressman said.
He estimated there could be as many as 15 or 20 Democrats who would support removal.
“If that were the case, then you would have a good chance of actually removing Nancy Pelosi,” he said.
Biggs said Pelosi “has abused her position, demonized millions of Americans, and extracted political revenge on President Trump by impeaching him.”
He said Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy “has already indicated that he might use the Freedom Caucus’s motion to respond in the event that Speaker Pelosi abuses her position yet again to impeach President Trump or Attorney General Barr over the Supreme Court vacancy.”
Biggs said Democrats stick with Pelosi largely because she “raises just bucket loads of money.”