When President Donald Trump was impeached and then acquitted in the U.S. Senate, the president got a clear boost from his fellow Republicans, who were unwilling to admit the president’s wrongdoing no matter how damning the evidence. Except for Senator Mitt Romney, that is. The Utah senator was famously the only Republican to vote in favor of Trump’s conviction, putting principle over party even as he became a GOP punching bag. And now, as Trump prepares to possibly face off in a general election against newly-crowned Democratic front-runner Joe Biden—Romney may be a thorn in Republicans’ sides once again.
Members of the Senate GOP have taken Biden’s recent surge in the primary race as a sign to ramp up their investigation into the former vice president and his dealings in Ukraine, with Senator Ron Johnson announcing the possibility of subpoenas just one day after Biden’s blowout victory in South Carolina. The Senate Homeland Security Committee is already set to vote next Wednesday on whether to subpoena records from a Democratic public relations firm, which concern Hunter Biden and his role on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. (The conspiracy against Biden, which accuses the then-V.P. of improperly pushing out a Ukrainian prosecutor general for investigating Burisma, have all been debunked.) Republicans only hold a slim one-vote majority on the committee, however—and Romney, a member of the committee, has signaled that he may be unwilling to play along with his Republican colleagues’ smear campaign against the possible Democratic nominee. The senator told reporters Thursday that he’s still “considering” his vote on the subpoena, saying, “There’s no question the appearance is not good.”
“There’s no question but that the appearance of looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden appears political, and I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations,” Romney said Thursday, adding that he “would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, nonpolitical body.” Should he oppose the subpoena, Romney could play a key role in derailing the burgeoning Senate investigation against Biden—but unlike with impeachment, this time he’s likely not the only Republican senator to have concerns. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr reportedly privately warned Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley, who’s also investigating Biden as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, that their investigation into the former vice president could play into Russia’s hands. Per Politico, Burr reportedly “expressed concerns” to Johnson and Grassley in December about the investigation, saying it “could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system.”
Johnson and Grassley, for their part, claim that their investigation into the potential Democratic nominee during the Democratic primary season is somehow not at all political or tied to the 2020 election. “This has nothing to do with the election,” Grassley claimed, pointing to how the committees have investigated Ukraine’s alleged role in the 2016 election—which has no basis in fact—since 2017. “[The investigations] may be coming together now, but that’s not how it started.” Johnson, similarly, claims that he’s unsure why Romney would vote against the supposedly innocent subpoena. “I don’t know why any member of my committee would vote against a subpoena that’s just looking for records from a U.S. consulting firm,” Johnson told Politico. (It should be noted that in a 2016 letter, Johnson himself advocated for “urgent reforms” to the same Ukrainian prosecutor general office that he’s now investigating Biden for opposing.)