Two days after Vice President Kamala Harris declared her candidacy for president, a freshman Republican lawmaker introduced articles of impeachment against her for violating her oath of office.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) filed the articles of impeachment against Harris on Tuesday, claiming she “demonstrated extraordinary incompetence in the execution of her duties and responsibilities, a stark refusal to uphold the existing immigration laws, and a palpable indifference to people of the United States suffering as a result of the ongoing southern border crisis in the United States.”
The same day, Ogles sent Harris a letter urging her to invoke the 25th Amendment, Fox News Digital first reported, which would allow the Vice President to take over temporarily—or permanently—if the president is incapacitated for some reason. Biden announced he had COVID on Wednesday.
If both Ogles’ moves were to succeed—something that almost certainly will not happen—House Speaker Mike Johnson would assume the duties of the presidency as the third in line.
The articles of impeachment claim that Harris “refused to visit the southern border to evaluate this ongoing crisis, aside from a single trip hundreds of miles away from the epicenter of the migrant crisis.”
According to Customs and Border Protection’s own data, monthly migrant encounters peaked at 301,982 in December 2023. This number includes the roughly 250,000 encountered by Border Patrol that month, as well as roughly 50,000 encountered by the Office of Field Operations—the branch responsible for guarding the nation’s official ports of entry.
However, migrant encounters have also fallen sharply in recent months, with agents encountering roughly 130,000 migrants in June—down from 207,000 in June 2023.
The articles of impeachment also claim that women have paid a “disproportionate price” for the influx of migrants, citing several headline-grabbing crimes including the murders of Rachel Morin in Maryland, Jocelyn Nungarary in Houston, and Laken Riley in Georgia. Riley’s family has previously asked that her death not be used “politically,” though Morin’s brother spoke about her murder on a hiking trail in August 2023 at the Republican National Convention last week.
This is not the first time Republicans, or even Ogles himself, have targeted the vice president for her role as “border czar.” Ogles introduced articles of impeachment against Harris in June 2023, again blaming the vice president for the influx of migrants and fentanyl seized by CBP and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The bill was co-sponsored by firebrand Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, but the impeachment effort never made it past the House Judiciary Committee.
Ogles, a freshman representative from Tennessee’s 5th district, is running for reelection and facing a tough primary challenge in August—despite obtaining a coveted endorsement from former President Donald Trump.
Ogles won one of three seats created when Tennessee Republicans redrew the state’s congressional districts, breaking Democratic-leaning Nashville up into three districts that pull in conservative voters from the city’s suburbs. A federal lawsuit challenged these districts as racial gerrymandering in August 2023.
Since his election in 2022, News Channel 5 in Nashville uncovered multiple instances where he embellished or lied about his resume, including claiming he was an economist despite only taking a single economics class at a community college. Ogles also claimed he trained as a police officer and passed himself off as a “former member of law enforcement” and a “human trafficking expert,” but records uncovered by the local station revealed he was let go from his position as a volunteer sheriff’s deputy after making no progress in field training and required courses after two years.
He also claimed he attended business school at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth—but only took non-degree granting courses not intended for graduate academic work.
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