With House Republicans floating an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) chastised the Democrats on Thursday for how they used the process against former President Donald Trump.
In an interview with host Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, the lawmaker said Republicans “should be better than the Democrats,” who he said “rushed” to impeachment during the last administration.
“I think there needs to be continued investigation,” Paul said, referring to committee-level probes into the Biden family and concerns Republicans have about a pattern of millions of dollars flowing from foreign nationals under suspicious circumstances.
Paul suggested that congressional investigators keep pressure on the FBI to make disclosures and to track down the 17 audio recordings of Biden and his son Hunter mentioned in an FBI document detailing claims by a confidential human source concerning an alleged multi-million-dollar bribery scheme and a Ukrainian oligarch.
Still, Paul argued that it would be premature for the GOP-led House to escalate their investigative work to an impeachment inquiry.
“I think it would be better to gather more before an impeachment. If there’s going to be impeachment, let’s have quite a bit of evidence out there [so] that the American people are actually behind this,” Paul said.
The House, then led by the Democrats, impeached Trump twice while he was in office: once for allegedly abusing the power of his office and obstructing Congress over his dealings with Ukraine, and a second time for “incitement of insurrection” following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Both times the GOP-controlled Senate acquitted Trump.
Now, with Republicans in command of the House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said this week that investigations into Biden — who called the allegations of corruption “a bunch of malarkey” — are “rising to the level of impeachment, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed.” McCarthy stopped short of committing to such an inquiry.
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Paul said he does not “really want to impeach every president that comes forward,” adding that he thinks “the Democrats set a terrible precedent in impeaching Donald Trump just because they didn’t like him, basically.”
The senator said he believes it is “not good for the republic to keep impeaching presidents.” He also mentioned indicting presidents, a reference to Trump and the charges he now faces across multiple investigations.
“All of this stuff is destructive,” Paul said.