KY House impeachment committee will consider a new petition against a GOP lawmaker
Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne said Wednesday the House of Representatives will send a citizens’ petition calling for the impeachment of Rep. Robert Goforth, R-East Bernstadt, to the same committee considering a petition to impeach Gov. Andy Beshear.
The impeachment committee investigating Beshear had their first meeting late Wednesday afternoon. The panel of four Republicans and three Democrats said they will invite the governor to respond in writing to the petition against him by January 22. The petitioners will then have time to reply. Neither document will be made public by the committee until it meets again on Jan. 27.
“We are taking this role seriously,” said state Rep. Angie Hatton, D-Whitesburg. “We are part of Kentucky history as it’s being made. I don’t want to be the one who does this wrong.”
The committee also noted that petitioners must pay for the cost of the proceeding if their petition is rejected.
Goforth, who launched a failed bid for governor in 2019, was indicted in September on charges of assault and strangulation. He is accused of using an Ethernet cable to strangle his wife while his kids were home. The charges are still pending, though his wife has asked that they be dropped.
Goforth won reelection in November with 70.8 percent of the vote.
The petition comes after Osborne, R-Prospect, said the Kentucky Constitution required him to form an impeachment committee to investigate whether Beshear, a Democrat, committed any impeachable offenses when he issued restrictions to limit the spread of COVID-19. A group of four citizens filed the petition against the governor.
Beshear has said there are “zero grounds” for impeachment and criticized the men who filed the petition, claiming some of them have made social media posts and took other actions aimed at terrorizing him and his family.
“I understand the speaker’s position that the law requires they form a committee,” Beshear said. “But going anywhere on it would be trying to undo a valid election.”
Wednesday’s petition against Goforth is a political repercussion of Osborne’s decision to form an impeachment committee against Beshear. Already, there is talk among some Democrats of filing an impeachment petition against Attorney General Daniel Cameron over his handling of the Breonna Taylor case.
One of the petitioners against Beshear, Jacob Clark, warned that the process would be used a lot more now that people know it exists.
“The process can be done on any elected official in the state,” Clark said. “Now that we know about this, people are going to see this a lot more from the liberty crowd.”
Osborne said he was not concerned about receiving multiple petitions for impeachment.
“If they’re properly executed, we will deal with them in a similar manner,” Osborne said.
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 6:15 PM.
