House Freedom Caucus Unanimously Opts to Condemn Justin Amash’s Impeachment Position

The House Freedom Caucus unanimously opted to condemn Rep. Justin Amash’s comments about impeaching President Donald Trump on Monday evening.

Amash was one of the original founders of the group.

The Michigan congressman called for the impeachment of President Trump on Saturday, becoming the first GOP congressman or senator to do so.

“We had a good discussion and every single member, I think now based on who was there and our board meeting was probably over 30 members, every single member disagrees and strongly with the position Justin took over the week, and we’re focused on the now,” Rep. Jim Jordan told reporters. “I mean, look, we’re focused on the fact that what the FBI did was wrong. We think that [Attorney General William] Barr’s handled himself exactly the way the American people want the Attorney General to handle themselves, and he’s going to get to bottom of all this.”

“What concerns me is Justin was viewed as a leader, right, on protecting privacy rights first to First Amendment rights,” Jordan added. “We had a press conference like a year ago with Rand Paul, Sen. [Ron] Wyden all on concerns about civil liberties and how the FISA court operates and what can happen in this whole, you know, this whole area, and now Justin’s, on the other side and I just don’t understand that.”

A big disappointment for Jordan was the fact that Amash knows full well the dangers of FISA abuse and still opted to take this position.

“You look at it, no one’s been a stronger voice on the potential abuses of FISA than Amash. I mean, he’s a passionate guy on it. So a lot of us agreed, and I remember we were all at a big press conference right before the reauth[oritzation] of FISA which was right before all this stuff came out about all this stuff with Trump,” he told reporters. “So to look at that and see him take the position he is, I mean, it’s shocking. And then I had no conversations with him about it. And I think that was another thing he just didn’t really talk to the group about it.”

Earlier in the day, Republican Michigan State Rep. Jim Lower announced that he will be mounting a primary challenge against Rep. Amash over his impeachment comments.

On Monday, Lower announced that he will be sitting out the race for his third term in the state senate and will instead be running for the 3rd Congressional District seat that Amash has held since 2011.

Lower, who is staunchly pro-Trump, said that he had been planning to run for the seat eventually, but decided now is the right time after Amash’s tweets.

“Congressman Justin Amash tweets yesterday calling for President Trump’s impeachment show how out of touch he is with the truth and how out of touch he is with people he represents,” Lower said, according to a report from the Detroit Free Press. “He must be replaced and I am going to do it.”

Amash has expressed his openness to running against President Trump in 2020 as the Libertarian Party candidate.

 

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