‘Did The White House Dare Them?’ CNN Anchor Asks Biden Spox If They Forced GOP Impeachment Probe

CNN anchor Phil Mattingly asked White House Spokesperson for Oversight and Investigations Ian Sams if President Joe Biden’s White House  “dared” the GOP to vote on an impeachment probe.

Wednesday saw Republicans formalize their impeachment inquiry in a 221 to 212 vote — despite widespread acknowledgment by journalists and even other Republicans that there is “no evidence” of wrongdoing by President Biden.

Sams was a guest on Thursday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, during which anchor Mattingly asked if the White House forced the GOP’s hand by arguing against the authority of a vote-less impeachment inquiry:

MATTINGLY: You know, to that point, the unanimous Republican vote, I think, would have surprised people three or four weeks ago. One of the reasons, or the primary reason, that a lot of moderate Republicans, or Republicans from Biden-won districts, particularly in places like New York, said they needed the tools, right? They needed — this was going to give them the ability to, as Chairman Jordan was saying, have people come in, do more of the investigation, which was in part driven by your own special counsel from the White House Counsel’s Office, citing a Trump-era Office of Legal Counsel opinion that said without a formal vote, you could not have the compulsory process that comes with impeachment power.

So, I guess did the White House dare them to go down this path?

SAMS: Well, there’s a process you’re supposed to follow in congressional oversight, and these guys just haven’t followed it. They’ve blazed right through. We’ve offered over and over and over again throughout this Congress to meet with them, to talk with them, to hear about any legitimate informational needs that they may have. And time and time again, they’ve ghosted us. They don’t respond to questions that we have for them. They don’t reach out to have meetings. So they’ve just blazed through this process. And there’s a reason why. The reason why is that this is a preordained outcome.

Don’t forget, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who right now is probably the most powerful member of the House Republican Conference, introduced articles of impeachment on day one of Joe Biden’s presidency, before he could even be the president, do anything.

They’ve decided from the moment that he took office that they were going to impeach him, and this is a natural continuation of that process.

And now what they’ve done is wasted millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on a fishing expedition trying to drum up an excuse for it.

MATTINGLY: So let’s, I want to ask you about the —

SAMS: And so they’ve blazed through this process wrongly, and I don’t think that that’s a fair characterization. And I think that as the facts come out, people will see that.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.