(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed articles of impeachment on Friday against Attorney General Merrick Garland, following the FBI’s unprecedented militarized raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and revelations that the authorizing search warrant read like a wildly-expansive fishing expedition.
“Merrick Garland has abused his position of power as the attorney general to politically persecute Joe Biden’s enemies,” Greene said from the Capitol before filing the impeachment resolution.
“The whole purpose of this is to prevent President Trump from ever being able to hold office.”
Charging that Garland “continues to materially endanger the justice system of the United States” by “utilizing the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Federal police force to punish or intimidate anyone who questions or opposes the current regime,” Greene’s resolution brings two charges of impeachment against Garland.
The attorney general on Thursday announced that he personally signed off on the raid, approving the decision to seek a search warrant targeting Mar-a-Lago.
“We cannot tolerate this in America where our great institutions are welded in such a way to defeat people’s political enemies,” Greene said. “That’s not what this is for, and it should never exist.”
The first article of the impeachment filing stated that Garland’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.”
In doing so, Garland has “lost the trust of citizens of the United States to faithfully execute the laws of the United States without partisan bias.”
“Attorney General Garland, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the justice system of the United States of America if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with democracy, self-governance, and the rule of law,” the resolution stated.
Citing Supreme Court precedent that found “the President, as Commander in Chief, has the power to control the classification and declassification of documents pertaining to national security,” the second article of impeachment stated that Garland “in persecuting former President Donald J. Trump over documents he legally declassified, has engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties as a civil officer of the United States.”
Greene’s resolution is likely to be killed by the Democrat-controlled House and suffer the same fate in the Senate, at least for a few more months.
A move to impeach Garland, or at least investigate the long string of alleged FBI abuses that have occurred under his watch, is more likely if a red wave swamps the midterms.
“I’ve never been a fan of overusing impeachment, but I think there has to be an investigation,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Fox News in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation leads to abuse of power that this could even lead to an impeachment of the attorney general.”
