Forty conservative groups filed an ethics complaint Wednesday against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for launching a “weaponized impeachment” against President Donald Trump.
Tea Party Patriot Action is leading the complaint, suggesting Pelosi has tried to seize political power from the executive branch of government by initiating her impeachment inquiry and “hypocritically usurped” President Donald Trump’s authority, Fox News reported.
They have sent their complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics and demanded it investigate Pelosi’s “misconduct.”
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) hug as they arrive ahead of comedian Dave Chappelle receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center in Washington, U.S., Oct. 27, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
“In launching her ‘official’ impeachment inquiry without benefit of a vote of the full House of Representatives and without indicating anything remotely qualifying as ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors’ that is the subject of the inquiry, Speaker Pelosi has weaponized impeachment,” reads a complaint signed by 40 politically conservative groups.
“If she now understands that before going any further, the full House of Representatives must make its impeachment inquiry legitimate by the casting of votes, she is tacitly admitting that what came before is illegitimate,” the letter states. “Consequently, all ‘evidence’ gleaned during this portion of the ‘investigation’ must be discarded for the sake of fairness.”
The complaint also delves into the ongoing controversy of whether former Vice President Joe Biden’s actions with regard to Ukraine were improper or illegal. Biden’s detractors argue that his son, Hunter Biden, was given a seat on the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company in order to protect the company from a corruption investigation.
Democratic presidential candidate, former vice President Joe Biden addresses a crowd at Wilson High School on Oct. 26, 2019 in Florence, South Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
The letter says Pelosi did not object when Biden “bragged that he had leveraged more than a billion dollars in U.S. assistance to Ukraine to achieve [a] desired policy end, threatening Ukrainian government officials that he would deny them U.S. assistance if they did not remove the prosecutor general within six hours.”(RELATED: Pelosi Says Trump ‘Is Goading Us To Impeach Him’)
The groups say the House Democrats should not even be inserting themselves into the president’s conduct of foreign policy — the basis of the impeachment inquiry charges Trump with linking military aid to Ukraine with that country conducting an investigation into Biden’s activities.
“Congress’ ability to influence the conduct of U.S. foreign and national security policy is wholly dependent on its power of persuasion,” the groups argue.