Rep. Claudia Tenney has written to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding that he and the president’s Cabinet being proceedings to remove President Joe Biden from office based on the report of special counsel Robert Hur and in accordance the 25th Amendment.
The letter from the New York Republican apparently went to Garland shortly after the counsel’s “alarming” report was released by Garland on Thursday afternoon. Garland received the report from Hur on Tuesday.
In his report, Hur said he didn’t recommend charges against the president because he was a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“[I]t would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him” of a crime “that requires a mental state of willfulness,” Hur wrote, according to Fox News.
In her letter, available below, Tenney argued that if Biden wasn’t competent to stand trial, he certainly wasn’t competent to serve as president.
Tenney Letter by The Western Journal on Scribd
“The Department of Justice cannot ethically bring charges against former president Trump because he has mental acuity and a forceful personality and decline to bring charges against President Biden because of his cognitive decline,” Tenney wrote in the letter. “President Biden needs to be charged. Unless he is not mentally competent to stand trial.”
“Candidly, the Special Counsel’s report makes a reasonable case that he is not. Being unable to remember what position he held, and when, is exceptionally concerning. Being unable to remember when one’s child died – even within a time frame of several years – is perhaps more frightening. He may not be competent to stand trial,” she wrote.
Should Biden be removed from office?
“And he most assuredly lacks the ability to execute his presidential responsibilities. Accordingly, it is incumbent upon you to begin proceedings to remove the President pursuant to the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution. President Biden needs to be charged, or he needs to be removed,” Tenney argued. “There is no middle ground.”
The 25th Amendment lays out a process by which a president can be removed from office if his Cabinet determines that he is unable to serve. The key word there is probably his; it seems highly unlikely that a Cabinet made up of Biden appointees would makes such a determination.
Moreover, according to Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, if Biden disputes his inability to serve, it would require a vote by two-thirds of both houses of Congress to remove him from office.
In other words, if the 81-year-old Biden doesn’t want to leave the White House — and he has given no indication that he does — then it would be impossible for Republicans in Congress to force him out without support from a significant number of lawmakers from the president’s party.
Tenney’s official House website did not include a news release or other information about her letter to the attorney general, but she did post Fox’s story about it to X.
Biden is either mentally capable to stand trial & should be charged for mishandling classified documents as Vice President OR he is unfit to serve as President.
There is no middle ground.https://t.co/EFIyHVVvUv
— Rep. Claudia Tenney (@RepTenney) February 9, 2024
“Biden is either mentally capable to stand trial & should be charged for mishandling classified documents as Vice President OR he is unfit to serve as President,” she argued again in her post.”There is no middle ground.”
