Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey at a hearing on Capitol Hill on February 1, 2023.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, then a Democrat, voted against an impeachment inquiry into Trump in 2019.
At the time, he said it would be divisive, lacked bipartisan support, and would fail in the Senate.
Now a Republican, he’s urging an impeachment inquiry into Biden, despite similar political dynamics.
In October 2019, then-Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey was one of just two members of his party to vote against launching an impeachment inquiry into then-President Donald Trump.
“Without bipartisan support I believe this inquiry will further divide the country tearing it apart at the seams and will ultimately fail in the Senate,” Van Drew said in a statement at the time.
House Democrats had decided to launch the inquiry after a whistleblower came forward alleging that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden. The House later voted to impeach Trump along partisan lines, and the effort did fail in the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans at the time.
Van Drew famously switched parties a few months later and has since become a stalwart Trump backer who votes in lockstep with House Republicans.
And now that he’s a Republican, he’s pushing for an impeachemnt inquiry into President Joe Biden — despite the fact that the inquiry is likely to also be a partisan affair, and the fact that the effort would almost certainly fail in the Senate, which is now controlled by Democrats.
“We have to be a little tough about this, we can’t be weak-kneed as Republicans,” Van Drew said on Fox Business recently.
Notably, Van Drew is calling for an inquiry in relation to Hunter Biden’s business dealings — the same reason that Trump sought to pressure Zelenskyy to investigate him in 2019.
On a conference call with House Republicans on Monday, Van Drew again spoke up in favor of the effort, according to multiple reports.
“It is definitely time, as we come back in September, in my opinion, for an impeachment inquiry,” said Van Drew on a conference call with House Republicans on Monday evening, according to Semafor.
Van Drew’s office did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on the congressman’s apparent change of heart on the divisiveness of partisan impeachment inquiries.