Like many on the right, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is politically opposed to impeaching President Barack Obama. But on Tuesday, he declared that legally, the rumored White House order granting amnesty to as many as 6 million illegal immigrants “would be an impeachable offense” — and Obama’s talk of impeachment may be a way to preempt that pushback.

Krauthammer spoke with Fox News’s Bret Baier on a panel with The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard and Fox News contributor Juan Williams. The group discussed the impeachment buzz swirling around Washington, which most observers agree is being ginned up by Democrats eager for the campaign donations such talk brings.

Krauthammer didn’t dispute that characterization, but offered a couple serious caveats. “There’s only one real thing here,” he claimed, “and that is that Obama is said to — or there are reports from the White House — that he’s going to do something by executive order about immigration.”

“If he were to do something like legalize five — let’s say half, which is what’s been talked about — huge numbers of illegal immigrants, to do it by executive order — which would be clearly lawless, and it would be the biggest overreach of a president in memory — it would be an impeachable offense,” Krauthammer declared.

“I would be 100 percent against impeachment,” the columnist clarified, “because it’s political suicide. But it really would be the basis for that.”

“That’s what I think the White House may actually be softening people up for,” Krauthammer mused. “An executive order that reaches impeachable offensive, but it’s a way to — it’s like a preemptive strike.”

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