Republicans won't stop lying about who voted to impeach Trump

For weeks, and during Wednesday’s impeachment debate, Republican after Republican has made the same claim: that the impeachment of Donald Trump is a purely “partisan” act by House Democrats alone.

“For the first time in history, the impeachment of a President was completely partisan,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise claimed Wednesday.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy similarly claimed Thursday that “the only bipartisan vote was against impeachment.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday it as “the first purely partisan presidential impeachment since the wake of the Civil War.”

But while every current member of the Republican Party voted against holding Trump accountable for his actions, one very conservative lawmaker — who is very much not a Democrat — voted yes.

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan voted for both articles of impeachment on Wednesday, saying the vote was about “maintaining the integrity of the office of the presidency, and ensuring that executive power is directed towards proper ends in accordance with the law.”

In a passionate floor speech before the vote, Amash said Trump’s “actions reflect precisely the type of conduct the framers of the Constitution intended to remedy through the power of impeachment. And it is our duty to impeach him.”

Amash was elected to Congress in 2010 as a Republican and was reelected as a Republican in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018.

He co-founded the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus in 2015 to push for the GOP to back even more conservative policies.

In 2016, He endorsed Texas Republican Ted Cruz for president.

He voted against increasing the minimum wage, for Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, and for the Trumpcare bill to strip millions of Americans of their Obamacare coverage.

“I’m not even a middle of the road Republican on these scorecards,” Amash said at a town hall in May of this year.

Though he left the GOP in July after calling Trump’s actions “impeachable,” he became an independent and has continued to vote with Trump most of the time. He has never hinted that he would even consider joining the Democrat Party or that any of his conservative positions have changed.

It is unclear why Republicans seem to think having minimal support from members of the other party makes impeachment somehow more legitimate. Just five Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998; three of them later switched parties. The only other president to be impeached — Andrew Johnson in 1868 — had support from all or nearly all House Democrats.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.