Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) believes there are "multiple grounds" for the impeachment of US President Joe Biden, especially following a historic two impeachments for Trump, according to the American lawmaker's recent remarks.
The move would require Republicans to win a House majority in the 2022 midterm elections.
"If we take the House, which I said is overwhelmingly likely, then I think we will see serious investigations of the Biden administration", the senator said on the latest episode of his podcast, "The Verdict with Ted Cruz".
Speaking to conservative political commentator Michael Knowles, Cruz claimed that he is "very optimistic" about the GOP's position ahead of the November election. He declared that Republicans have a 90% chance of taking the House in 2022, although chances "may even be higher than that".
Cruz was less optimistic about the GOP taking control of the US Senate, which is presently comprised of 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. "I put our odds at 50/50", he said.
The US senator from Texas claimed that Democrats had "crossed the line" by bringing Trump up on multiple impeachment charges during his presidency.
During Trump's first impeachment, in December 2019, the House voted in favour of impeaching him on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The second impeachment saw an "incitement of insurrection" charge from the House, which found that Trump had incited his supporters prior to their storming of the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021.
In the first case, the GOP-majority US Senate voted to acquit Trump of the impeachment article adopted by the House. In the second case, the Senate voted in favour of the charges against Trump, but was 10 votes short needed to convict the president.
"They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him," Cruz offered, additionally suggesting that "one of the real disadvantages of doing that is, the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander."
According to Cruz, who was born in Canada, one potential article of impeachment against Biden could relate to what the former characterised as the "utter lawlessness" of the presidential administration's "refusal to enforce the [US-Mexico] border".
Cruz and other Republicans have been consistently critical of Biden's handling of the US southern border crisis amid a surge of migrant detentions. In March 2021, Cruz tweeted several images from a migrant detention facility in Donna, Texas, showing overcrowding of children and teens in the centre.
At the time, Cruz called the situation "a humanitarian and public health crisis".
Following a recent court order, the Biden administration reinstated a Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy, which forces non-Mexican asylum seekers at the southern US border to be returned to Mexico as immigration officials review their claims. Biden previously critiqued the policy as a "dangerous" and "inhumane" immigration programme.