GOP lawmaker: I’m not sure we ever had votes for impeachment

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday evening that he was not sure the House GOP ever had enough votes for an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. 

Burchett is a member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which held a hearing yesterday with two Republican witnesses who had little connection to Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

The lawmaker suggested they should just put the impeachment up for a vote and move onto something new. 

“We’re not gonna have the votes … that’s clearly the case,” he told NewsNation’s Dan Abrams. “And I don’t think we ever did.”

“I think you had a lot of Republicans, a few Republicans that would have pulled out. And now that we’ve — a bunch have just left us in the middle of their terms, or the end, or the end of their terms, I think it’d be very questionable whether we could get the votes,” Burchett added.

The White House has been pushing House Republicans to drop the impeachment inquiry for months, calling the most recent hearing “embarrassing for Republicans” and a “total waste of time.”

Other conservative media personalities have also questioned whether it is time for House Republicans to move past impeachment, with Newsmax host Rob Finnerty telling Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) earlier this week that it is “not going anywhere.”

Burchett said even if the House Republicans had sufficient evidence, he did not think the Justice Department would take action against the president.

“I’ve said all along, even if we had the smoking gun, as you called it, I don’t think the Justice Department is going to do anything,” he added.

NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.