In a speech on the floor of the House Wednesday, Texas U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee claimed that Democrats never sought to impeach President George W. Bush.
Not only is that claim false, but Jackson-Lee actually co-sponsored a 2008 bill to do just that and spoke in at least one House committee hearing in support of the effort.
Jackson-Lee’s remarks Wednesday came ahead of a vote on a Republican-backed measure to sue President Obama for overstepping his bounds in implementing Obamacare.
“I ask my colleagues to oppose this resolution for it is in fact a veiled attempt for impeachment and it undermines the law that allows a president to do his job,” Jackson-Lee said on Wednesday.
“A historical fact that President Bush pushed this nation into a war that had little to do with apprehending terrorists. We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush, because as an executive, he had his authority. President Obama has the authority.”
But Jackson-Lee is wrong.
In 2008, former Ohio U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a prominent opponent of the Iraq war, introduced a bill titled “Impeaching George W. Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Jackson Lee and 10 other Democrats co-sponsored it.
Among the numerous complaints laid out in the impeachment bill were that Bush created “a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq” and that he invaded “Iraq absent a declaration of war.”
Video evidence from that time also exists suggesting that Jackson-Lee’s memory is shaky.
In a House Judiciary Committee meeting in July 2008, Jackson-Lee laid out her support for impeaching Bush.
“Whether or not we define it as high crimes and misdemeanors, which frankly I do believe we have a very firm basis of suggesting high crimes and misdemeanors because the impeachment inquiry made in this body – the Judiciary Committee – is what it is. It is a prosecutorial approach, it is the indictment, it is the question of determining whether we move forward,” Jackson-Lee said at the hearing.
“We should not be intimidated by the process or time,” she added.
On Wednesday, the House voted along party lines, 225-201, to sue Obama. While, as the vote suggests, Republicans largely agree with an effort to sue him, calls for impeachment are less popular. That has not stopped Democrats from amplifying the few Republicans who do support the idea of impeaching Obama, as a number of Democratic groups have started fundraising based on claims that Republicans want to impeach him.
WATCH:
