Kentucky House Impeachment Committee delays action, asks Beshear for more info
The Kentucky House of Representatives Impeachment Committee balked at taking action Wednesday on a petition to remove Gov. Andy Beshear from office over his actions to slow the spread of COVID-19, and instead opted to ask Beshear’s office for more information.
After a two and a half hour closed-door session, the committee reopened the meeting to the public and said one of the four citizen petitioners, Randall Daniel, will withdraw from the petition and that the committee needed more information from the governor.
The decision to not immediately dismiss the petition indicates that some members of the committee may find merit in the arguments made by the petitioners even though the Kentucky Supreme Court has previously sided with Beshear when his restrictions were challenged in court.
In their original response to the petition, obtained by the Herald-Leader through an open records request, Beshear’s attorneys argued that most of the claims in the petition had already been settled by the courts and that the ones that hadn’t didn’t have any merit.
“This body must uphold the Commonwealth’s constitutional order and put an end to this vendetta that has no support in the law or reality,” wrote Amy Cubbage, Beshear’s general counsel. “The petitioners have not and, indeed, cannot state a case for impeachment. The Committee must dismiss the Petition.”
The chairman of the committee, Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, did not say what information they were requesting, only that a letter will be drafted, sent to Beshear and released to the public Thursday. Beshear’s office will have until Monday to respond.
“The information that we will request, he’ll be able to respond really quickly,” Nemes said.
The impeachment committee did not take action on either of the two other petitions that have been filed. Nemes said they did not discuss the petition to impeach Rep. Robert Goforth, R-East Bernstadt, and that they only acknowledged it was received.
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.
A petition to impeach Attorney General Daniel Cameron has not yet been sent to the committee, as the full legislature is adjourned until February 2.
A motion to remove Nemes as chairman of the committee, filed by Anna Whites, who worked for former Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo, has also not yet been sent to the committee.
The committee, which is made up of four Republicans and three Democrats, has become a landing pad for an exchange of politically charged petitions and claims. After House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, formed the committee to handle the petition against Beshear, Whites filed the petitions against Goforth and Cameron.
Members of the committee have talked repeatedly of the important process of weighing whether a constitutional officer should be impeached, but have largely ignored the political nature of the claims.
The petitioners were allowed to respond to Beshear, and three of the four submitted their responses. They have not yet been made public.
In the letter asking that Daniel’s name be withdrawn from the petition, attorney Robert Sexton said Daniel wanted to remove his name after he learned that “impeachment is not a proper response when public officials make policy decisions with which a citizen disagrees.”
The committee did not set the date for their next meeting.
This story was originally published January 27, 2021 at 6:34 PM.
