FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., formally filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on Friday over his recent comments about withholding offensive weapons aid to Israel, drawing parallels to House Democrats’ first impeachment of former President Trump.
The first-term House Republican told Fox News Digital it was his “constitutional duty” to do so.
His legislative text, first obtained by Fox News Digital, accuses Biden of “abuse of power” and charges that he tried to force Israel into changing its own defense policies by leveraging lethal aid.
“In violation of his oath to faithfully execute the office of President and to uphold the Constitution, President Biden abused the powers of his office by soliciting a ‘quid pro quo’ with Israel while leveraging vital military aid for policy changes. This egregious action not only compromised the credibility of the United States but also undermined the interests of our longstanding ally, Israel. Therefore, President Biden’s conduct warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification from holding any future office under the United States,” Mills said in a statement.
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Rep. Cory Mills tells Fox News Digital that he is preparing impeachment articles against President Biden over his recent Israel threat (Getty Images)
Fox News Digital was first to report Mills’ intent to file the impeachment articles on Thursday. He and other GOP lawmakers have drawn comparisons between Biden’s comments on Israel and Trump’s leveraging of lethal aid to Ukraine unless Kyiv announced an investigation into the Bidens.
“Joe Biden is pressuring Israel, our biggest ally in the Middle East, by pausing their funding that has already been approved in the House, if they don’t stop all operations with Hamas. It’s a very clear message, ‘this for that,'” Mills said Thursday. “These are the same accusations made against President Trump, which resulted in his impeachment by Democrats. The same must happen for Joe Biden, which is why we’re drawing up articles of impeachment now.”
Biden made the high-stakes ultimatum to Israel’s government in a CNN interview that aired Wednesday night as it prepares for a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The city is currently home to more than a million Palestinians who left other parts of the Gaza Strip, where Israel has conducted its mission to eradicate the terrorist group Hamas.
Biden said Israel would continue to see U.S. support for its defensive systems, like the Iron Dome, in the CNN interview. He added, however, that “if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem.”
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Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, May 7. (AP/Ramez Habboub)
Mills’ legislative text argues that in making those comments, Biden “used the powers of the presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and its ally Israel.”
It’s highly unlikely for the push to reach the level of a Senate trial, with the House’s current ongoing impeachment inquiry into Biden still searching for smoking gun evidence amid accusations of improper behavior and bribery, all of which the White House has denied.
But it shows the sky-high tensions that have taken over Washington amid Israel’s war on Hamas after the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack.
A White House official told Fox News Digital that Mills’ push was “ridiculous” on Thursday.
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“Senior administration officials had already made multiple public statements about Rafah similar to the President’s, including that we are also ensuring Israel gets every dollar appropriated in the supplemental. Trump failed to spend dollars appropriated by Congress that he was legally required to spend. This is about a purchase made by a foreign government and our decision whether to deliver that purchase right now, which could enable an operation we’ve publicly and privately objected to,” the official said.
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Meanwhile, White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told reporters on Thursday, “As the President said, Israel has not yet launched such an operation, so he was talking about what would happen in the future if they did. That is a choice Israel will have to make. We hope they don’t. We will keep working with them to develop alternative approaches that we think have a better chance of strategic success and a better chance of eliminating the threat that Israeli people still face from Hamas.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for further comment on Friday.