It would be a “dream come true” to draft legislation and impeach President Obama, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio told a crowd of supporters in a video posted to YouTube Tuesday.
Bentivolio, a reindeer farmer turned Republican congressman, was elected in 2012 after incumbent Rep. Thad McCotter decided to retire after it came out that his campaign had filed fraudulent signatures to get him on the ballot.
“If I could write that bill and submit it,” Bentivolio said, as the original questioner interrupted and admonished him to “Do it!”
“It would be a dream come true,” he added. “I feel your pain. I know. I stood 12-feet away from the guy and listened to him,” he added. “And I couldn’t stand being there, but because he is president, I have to respect the office. That’s my job, as a congressman. I respect the office.”
Bentivolio added that he’s met with lawyers to discuss impeachment, but also acknowledged he needs grounds to bring articles of impeachment against the president.
“Until we have the evidence, you’re going to become a laughing stock if you’ve submitted a bill to impeach the president, because number one, you’ve got to convince the press,” he said.
He suggested one hypothetical situation in which he might receive an email showing the president’s chief of staff directed former IRS official Lois Lerner to target Tea Party groups, as possible evidence he could use, but failed to note anything he has now.
Watch Rep. Bentivolio talk about impeachment at 27:40 on the video below.
While he said he lacks the grounds for it, this is not the first time Republican lawmakers have discussed the president’s impeachment during this congressional recess period, and Bentivolio may not be alone in his desire to impeach the president.
Last week Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold told supporters that he could probably “find the votes” in the House of Representative to bring articles of impeachment against the president. While he never specifically explained what those grounds for impeachment would be, he made the comments in the midst of a discussion of the president’s “birth certificate.”
“I think unfortunately the House is already out of the barn on this, on the whole birth certificate issue,” he said. “The original Congress, when his eligibility came up, should have looked into it and they didn’t. I’m not sure how we fix it.”
“If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it,” he said. “But it would go to the Senate and he wouldn’t be convicted.”
Fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz, echoed those remarks at an event on Monday, when asked why not impeach the president.
“It’s a good question,” Cruz said in response. “And I’ll tell you the simplest answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate.”
Protesters popped up near an event Obama held in Florida earlier this month with signs that encouraged the president’s impeachment, and at least one other that said “Kenyan Go Home.”
The national conversation to impeach the president has been fueled in part by an upcoming book “Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Obama from Office” that’s set to be released by WND Books next week.
The authors of that book lay out a number of criticisms of the president, including his handling of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and his failure to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution. That includes the argument that the president’s health reform law is unconstitutional, even though the Supreme Court ruled more than a year ago that it is constitutional.
Morgan Whitaker