House Speaker Mike Johnson pursues impeachment strategy he once said could cause ‘irreparable damage’ to the country

CNN —

House Speaker Mike Johnson is pursuing an impeachment strategy against President Joe Biden that he once said could cause “irreparable damage” to the country when Democrats sought to oust then-President Donald Trump, according to a CNN KFile review of his past public comments.

Just four years ago, Johnson blasted Democrats for opening an impeachment inquiry into Trump largely along party lines less than a year before the next presidential election — the exact circumstances Johnson finds himself in now.

In radio interviews reviewed by CNN, Johnson criticized Democrats for using what he called “gerrymandered facts” in their 2019 impeachment inquiry for the sole and “predetermined” purpose of impeaching Trump to undermine his political standing. He argued the Democrats’ grievances against Trump should be settled by voters and not through such an extreme remedy as impeachment.

“If you don’t like the president, he goes on a ballot again after four years,” Johnson said in a December 2019 interview. “We have an election in 11 months. Let the people decide this.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson attends a news conference about a range of issues, including the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, at the US Capitol on November 29 in Washington, DC.

Somewhat prophetically, he warned Democrats that what they were doing was “short-sighted” and said that impeaching Trump opened a “Pandora’s box” in which every opposition party in control of the House could impeach the president, an outcome he asserted the Founding Fathers feared. He also complained that the effort derailed Congress from its real work of legislating.

“What happens a few years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? You have a Democrat in the