On Monday night, the conservative House Freedom Caucus condemned Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) for calling for President Trump’s impeachment.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) asserted, “We had a good discussion and every single member, I think now based on who was there and our board meeting was probably over 30 members, every single member disagrees and strongly with the position Justin took over the week, and we’re focused on the now,” according to The Hill. Politico reported, “Amash did not attend the meeting, but Jordan said he spoke to Amash Saturday night to ask, ‘What are you doing?’”
As The Daily Wire reported on Saturday, Amash tweeted: “Here are my principal conclusions: 1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report. 2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct. 3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances. 4. Few members of Congress have read the report.”
The Daily Wire noted, “In the series of tweets, Amash failed to provide a single example of how Barr ‘deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report,’ and ignored the fact that CNN and The Washington Post have reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has stated that Barr did not say anything inaccurate in his letter to Congress about the report. Furthermore, Amash did not quote Mueller’s report at all in his rant.”
Jordan continued, “I mean, look, we’re focused on the fact that what the FBI did was wrong. We think that Barr’s handled himself exactly the way the American people want the attorney general to handle themselves, and he’s going to get to bottom of all this.”
He added, “What concerns me is Justin was viewed as a leader, right, on protecting privacy rights first to First Amendment rights. We had a press conference like a year ago with Rand Paul, Ron Wyden all on concerns about civil liberties and how the FISA court operates and what can happen in this whole, you know, this whole area, and now Justin’s on the other side and I just don’t understand that.”
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) pointed out to The Hill that Amash had missed multiple Freedom Caucus meetings this year and had not convened a meeting of the Liberty Caucus, which he founded. He stated, “You look at it, no one’s been a stronger voice on the potential abuses of FISA than Amash. I mean, he’s a passionate guy on it. So a lot of us agreed, and I remember we were all at a big press conference right before the [reauthorization] of FISA, which was right before all this stuff came out about all this stuff with Trump. So to look at that and see him take the position he is, I mean, it’s shocking. And then I had no conversations with him about it. And I think that was another thing he just didn’t really talk to the group about it.”
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) echoed to The Hill, “Everybody’s entitled their opinion, it’s just in this case Justin is one solo voice and the rest of this group here says, ‘You’re wrong.’”
On Saturday, in response to Amash’s call for impeaching Trump, State Rep. Jim Lower hinted that he would primary Amash in 2020, tweeting, “This cannot go unchallenged! I support @realDonaldTrump, I support West Michigan values, I support our party’s values and I will have a major announcement regarding MI CD3 this week!”