Republicans lose appetite for impeaching Biden for hold on weapons for Israel’s war on Hamas

The latest effort to impeach President Biden, this time for his threats to keep blocking arms shipments to Israel, has lost momentum.

Rep. Cory Mills’ impeachment resolution, which accuses Mr. Biden of engaging in a quid pro quo of weapons in return for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu changing his military strategy in the war on Hamas terrorists, gained just five co-sponsors in the week since it was introduced.

Mr. Mills, Florida Republican, said that he would meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson to “strengthen the language” of his resolution, but that hasn’t prompted the speaker to back the articles of impeachment.

Several House Republicans said the president’s actions do not meet the high threshold for impeachment. Others argued that the GOP should stay focused on the long-running impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden’s family business deals.

“It’s got to be an option of last resort and I maintain that,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania Republican.

Mr. Mills hasn’t generated interest in the impeachment despite basing it on the very same law that Democrats accused former President Donald Trump of breaking when he was impeached in 2019. He accused Mr. Biden of breaking the Impoundment Control Act by threatening to continue withholding weapons approved by Congress. That 1974 law, passed during the height of the Watergate scandal, restricted a president’s ability to block funding previously allocated by Congress. 

In 2019, Democrats accused Mr. Trump of breaking that law when he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he would hold back $319 million of approved funding unless Ukrainian officials opened an investigation into Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

Mr. Mills noted the parallels between the two impeachments and even reused much of the language from the 2019 impeachment resolution by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat.

“The brilliance of what I was trying to achieve here, though, was that when the Democrats set an improper precedent we always try and take the moral high ground, and I agree with that,” Mr. Mills said. “But at the end of the day, how much longer we can allow them to get away with this?”

The law also blocks presidents from withholding funding for “policy reasons” or political gain. Without congressional approval or legitimate reason cited by a president, it is illegal to withhold the money.

The White House and Democrats argue that Mr. Biden’s threats were a proper exercise of his authority on foreign policy decisions as commander-in-chief. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said any effort by Congress to constrain his ability to deliver or not deliver weapons to Israel would be unconstitutional. 

“It was in our legal authority to do so,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said of withholding the arms. “This is one shipment, as we talk about the Rafah operation in our concerns about a major military operation.”

Mr. Trump’s 2019 impeachment ended with his acquittal by the Republican-led Senate. However, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog group, concluded that Mr. Trump broke the law because he withheld funding for a “policy reason.” 

Still, what constitutes a policy decision is legally murky, said Matthew Kenney, a former Defense Department official in the Trump administration. The law doesn’t define “a policy reason,” leaving it open to interpretation. 

He said the sale of arms to Israel is especially opaque because Mr. Biden is halting weapons, not money.

“It’s a little more clear cut when talking about specifically appropriated money. It’s more cloudy when you’re talking about foreign military sales because there other laws potentially at play such as well as the Arms Export Control Act, which have their own requirements,” said Mr. Kenney, who now serves as vice president for government affairs at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

The murky law and circumstances surrounding Mr. Biden’s decision have not dissuaded some Republicans.

“Look, we’ve got to send a message to this president that he’s not a monarch,” said Rep. John Rutherford, Florida Republican. “He doesn’t get to just do whatever he wants to do. He’s got to follow the law.”