House GOP scrambles to appease Trump after Biden impeachment fails

The House Republicans’ big plans to impeach President Joe Biden have imploded, forcing them to acknowledge they don’t have the votes to impeach on the flimsy evidence they’ve scraped together. So they’re trying to figure out how to make 14 months of wasted time investigating Biden look like it was serious, and have come up with the idea of packaging it all up in a criminal referral and sending it to the Department of Justice.

That’s coming straight from House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s mouth. You know Comer, the hapless bumbler who admitted last spring that he couldn’t find any Biden crimes, but kept on “investigating” anyway, only to see all those months of nonsense blown out of the water when it was revealed last month that one of his star witnesses was being fed false information by Russian agents. 

So it’s time to pivot. “At the end of the day, what does accountability look like? It looks like criminal referrals,” Comer recently told Fox New host Sean Hannity. “It looks like referring people to the Department of Justice. … If Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice won’t take any potential criminal referrals seriously, then maybe the next president, with a new attorney general, will.”

This new strategy seems to come at the direction of Donald Trump, who’d love to have locking Biden up as a central campaign theme this year. Comer’s interview with Hannity came shortly after Comer just so happened to run into Trump while having lunch with Trump donor Vernon Hill at one of Trump's Florida properties. What a coincidence they bumped into each other! 

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Republicans took their marching orders from Trump. One MAGA lawmaker, Texas Rep. Troy Nehls, even admitted that the motivation for him on impeachment was to give Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” at Biden in this year’s presidential race. Just like how Republicans killed the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill, on Trump’s orders.

House Speaker Mike Johnson confirms they are talking about criminal referrals, but he won’t commit to it. He told CNN he’s just been too busy to keep up with the investigations. “To be very frank with you, very honest and transparent because I’ve been so busy with all my other responsibilities, I have not been able to take the time to do the deep dive in the evidence, but what has been uncovered is alarming,” but that there’s “more deliberation to be done on it that’s for sure.”

There sure is. The decision to make a criminal referral against a sitting president—knowing that the Department of Justice would almost certainly have to defer it—isn’t something all Republicans relish. Even the hard-line conservative and very shady California Rep. Darrell Issa is throwing cold water on the idea, telling The New York Times, “We don’t refer a seated president for criminal charges.” He added that maybe they could make criminal referrals for Biden family members, “but most of what we’ve discovered they already knew.” 

Vulnerable Republicans, whom Johnson desperately needs to keep the House majority, likely want to distance themselves from the whole thing. One of them, Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, told CNN that he has way more important things to deal with. “I’m focused on five or 10 things other than that right now,” he said.

What happens next will have to be decided by the whole conference, and Johnson is going to have to lead. With Trump and MAGA members pressing for criminal referrals and plenty in the conference just wanting to forget the whole thing, it’s going to cause even more dissension in the ranks. 

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The ripple effects of the Dobbs decision are impacting not only the right to an abortion but also abortion funding, IVF, and even recreational sex. Joining us on this week's episode of "The Downballot" is Grace Panetta, a political reporter at The 19th who has closely covered the electoral consequences of this ever-widening set of issues. Panetta highlights key races this year where reproductive rights will take center stage, including ballot initiatives in multiple states, efforts to repeal bans on public funding of abortions, and an upcoming special election in Alabama, the state that just thrust IVF into the limelight.

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GOP seeks new way to attack Biden since impeachment scheme is a bust

Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing with special counsel Robert Hur showcased Republican desperation to find some way to attack President Joe Biden.

Despite the release of a full transcript of the interview between Hur and Biden that showed complaints about the president’s memory to be exaggerated, if not outright lies, many Republicans continued to pursue the Biden-so-old route. Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran went so far as to suggest that Biden should be placed under guardianship for diminished mental capabilities

At the same time, committee Chair Jim Jordan was one of multiple Republican members who asked Hur to envision fantasy scenarios in which the president was 15 or 20 years younger. That was part of an extended, and sometimes laughably desperate, effort by Republicans to get Hur to say that somehow, somewhen, somewhere in the multiverse, he might have considered charging Biden. They did not succeed.

But the biggest reason for the Hur hearing wasn’t just to give a chance to alternate between asking whether Biden should be in a care facility or if he’s a criminal mastermind. The reason that the Republicans called in Hur is that their big impeachment scheme has fallen apart. Now they are madly searching for something, anything, that they can throw against the walls of the White House.

As Politico reported on Wednesday, the Republican plan to impeach Biden appears to be all but dead. That effort began as soon as Republicans had their hands on the machinery of the House, with Rep. James Comer chairing the House Oversight Committee running a parallel “investigation” with Jordan on the Judiciary Committee and Chairman Jason Smith on the Ways and Means Committee. It reached its ludicrous peak on Sep. 12, 2023, when then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry in a blatant effort to hang onto his big office. That didn’t work.

By the time Hunter Biden made his way to a closed-door meeting of the inquiry on Feb. 28, 2024, it seemed clear Republicans were only spinning their wheels. Despite hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Republicans had produced nothing more than some truck payments, family loans, and a heavily debunked claim from an indicted foreign agent

However, as the Politico article notes, Republicans see it as a high priority to “antagonize the White House.”

It might seem that getting some legislation passed after a session in which Republican infighting resulted in just 27 bills escaping the House (that includes renaming some Veterans Affairs clinics and issuing a commemorative coin). But Republicans are convinced that demonstrating competence in governing doesn’t matter to their voters. 

So they are just going to throw crap against the walls of the Capitol in the hopes that some of it might stick.

Among the Republican Plan Bs under consideration are:

  • Sending criminal referrals for Hunter Biden to the Justice Department. 

  • Keep investigating, but save any announcements for closer to Election Day.

  • Just keep investigating and making false claims—because that’s worked so well so far.

There’s also a plan to sue the Department of Justice, though it’s not clear why. 

There’s even a suggestion that Republicans might do something that seems anathema to them so far—draft legislation. In this case, it would be legislation to tighten rules for financial reporting and foreign lobbying.

However, not only would this require them to break out a pencil stub and do the work they’ve resisted since taking control of the House in 2023, it would also mean drafting something that would pass the Senate. It could be exceedingly difficult to craft a bill on financial reporting that didn’t have a much bigger impact on Donald Trump than Biden. Ditto on issues of foreign lobbying.

The problem for Republicans is that Trump and his family did all the things they’ve been attributing to Biden and his family. Which would seem to make the legislative route difficult without netting the wrong fish.

Other options, like the idea of making a criminal referral on Hunter Biden, would be an obvious exercise in toothless grandstanding. But that hasn’t seemed to bother Republicans so far, so this is likely what they’ll do.

Republicans are reportedly so far away from mustering enough support for a Biden impeachment that even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson can see that such a move would fail. But they’re unwilling—and possibly incapable—of trying to dig their way back to respectability by passing legislation that addresses the nation’s needs.

So they’re going to sit among the ashes of their very fine impeachment inquiry and try to find something else ugly enough to please MAGA voters. So far, they’ve got nothing.

The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell joins Kerry to discuss the State of the Union and what President Biden needs to do to soundly defeat Donald Trump in Novembe.

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House GOP prepares to embarrass itself with more Biden impeachment nonsense

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan has grasped at every straw in his quest to avenge Donald Trump and impeach President Joe Biden, including the one straw held out to him by an alleged Russian mole. That having blown up embarrassingly in his face, Jordan appears to be leading his committee into another fiasco.

Jordan’s latest effort is his investigation into just how old Biden is, with a hearing Tuesday. His star witness is special counsel Robert Hur, the Department of Justice official who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents and found that no criminal charges were warranted. Hur did, however, throw in some gratuitous hits on Biden’s age in his report, which legal experts have called “a partisan hit job.”

Hur probably won’t deliver what Jordant wants, according to sources involved with preparing Hur’s testimony who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. Hur is “intent on turning down the political temperature surrounding his report,” the Journal reports, and to try to explain why he included the extraneous bits about Biden’s memory. Those details, Hur is expected to say, “were necessary to explain his team’s decision that charges weren’t justified.”

That’s problem No. 1 for Jordan. Problem No. 2 is that Biden himself blew the “Biden is too old” narrative clear out of the water with last week’s State of the Union address. Biden adeptly scrapped with Republican hecklers, forcefully laid out his agenda and earned news reports declaring him aggressive, energetic, fiery, feisty, and forceful. Biden’s speech didn’t just wow the pundits—it seems to have impressed voters. Public opinion soared in quick polls conducted after the speech.

That’s going to make arguing that this man is too doddery and feeble to be trusted with the nation’s security a little tough for Jordan and team. It also gives Democrats on the committee a chance to swing for the fences on Donald Trump’s fitness to lead, particularly his alleged classified documents crimes. 

Because what Republicans tended to ignore in Hur’s report was the part where he compared Trump’s and Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur pointed out that “after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” and that Trump “not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.” 

On the other hand, Hur wrote, “Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.” You can be sure that the Democrats on the committee are going to be teasing out every detail of that comparison, putting Hur on the record against Trump. 

Thus Jordan’s star witness is shaping up to be a hostile one, the whole premise of the hearing has fallen apart, and he’s opening up the congressional record for more official testimony from a representative of the Department of Justice about Trump’s abuse of power. This might just be fun.

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Hunter Biden absolutely owned Republicans in his testimony

Ever since they launched their “investigation” into supposed misdealings by members of President Joe Biden’s family, Republicans have clamored to get Hunter Biden behind closed doors. On Wednesday, that finally happened, but those same Republicans can’t be too happy about the results.

Thanks to the insistence of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, who didn’t want the results of this appearance buried along with 91 other transcripts that Republicans have refused to release, the full transcript of Hunter Biden’s six-hour deposition is now available. 

What it shows is by turns hilarious and infuriating. Republicans clearly have no evidence that President Joe Biden has ever done anything wrong in connection to his son or his son’s business. Hunter’s testimony only showed the tragedy of his experience with drugs, how far Republicans were willing to go to indulge conspiracy theories, and how trivial all Hunter’s business dealings were in comparison to something that really does deserve investigation: the $2 billion reward lavished on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Hunter Biden was 2 years old when his father became a senator, and everything he had to say about his professional relationship could be summed up in one response that Hunter gave to a question by Rep. Jamie Raskin.

Transcript quotations have been slightly edited for readability. 

Hunter: There was one thing that we—that I was fully aware of my entire life, is that my dad was an official of the United States Government, and there were very bright lines that I abided to and that I was very, very cognizant of. And I made certain that I never engaged with my father in asking him to do anything on my behalf or on behalf of any client of mine.

Republicans spent a lot of the day repeating wild claims about Hunter’s business dealings and trying to get him to admit to at least some of the connections they have been alleging for months. That never happened. That single response by Hunter was never seriously challenged.

However, there were some satisfying exchanges, as when Hunter took questions from Rep. Matt Gaetz. Republicans have been claiming from the beginning that Hunter Biden had no value to the businesses where he worked beyond his last name, and Gaetz went right to this point.

Gaetz: What value did you bring to Burisma? 

Hunter: I would love to, again, read you the entirety of my resume.

Gaetz: No, that's the things you did before Burisma. I mean, when you were working at Burisma – 

Hunter: Well, that's the value that I brought to Burisma. The things that I did before, my experience, the vast experience that I had. I was on over 13 different boards. I was the chairman of the board of the largest humanitarian organization, that supports the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I was the vice chairman of the board of the largest national passenger rail system. 

Gaetz: Mr. Biden, I don't need you to go back through your resume.

Hunter: You just asked –

Gaetz. The question is, how did you deploy that experience for a million bucks a year for Burisma?

Hunter: How did I deploy that experience? By serving on the board in a transparent and ethical way, providing the best advice that I could give. Just like any other board member on any other company in any other organization, that's how you provide your value. And the value is your experience. The value is your ability to then transfer that experience into real-world action.

Like other Republican questioners, Gaetz failed to get an answer that handed him any ammunition he could use against Joe Biden or any reason for the farcical investigation to continue. 

But Gaetz got some extra special feedback as he tried to spin out a ludicrous conspiracy that Hunter was going to provide his father with an office at his company based entirely on an email in which Hunter expressed a desire to show off some empty office space to his parents. After Hunter pointed out that he had never provided any office space to Joe Biden, Gaetz pounced … Or at least, he thought he did.

Hunter: My dad never took an office space with me.

Gaetz. No, but you were contemplating it in this email.

Hunter: I contemplated a lot of things during that time.

Gaetz. And that's what—see, because earlier you say, "My father, firewall, had nothing to do with my business," and now you're contemplating giving him keys to your office to redeem yourself.

Hunter: How is contemplation … Let me ask a question. How is contemplation of something evidence of involvement? I alone contemplate. I contemplate that one day you and I are going to be great friends. Is that ever going to happen, Mr. Gaetz? I don't think so.

Gaetz also got some very direct pushback when he asked a question about Hunter’s drug use.

Hunter: Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that’s appropriate to ask me?

Gaetz: Absolutely.

Hunter: Of all the people sitting around this table, do you think that’s appropriate to ask me?

Other Republican representatives repeatedly asked Hunter whether he had received money from foreign governments, including China, Ukraine, and ... Romania? To all of these questions, Hunter firmly answered that he had never worked for or received pay from any foreign government. Unlike someone else.

Hunter: The question being asked, that you're stating, is that my father said that I never received any money from China, the Government of China. Unlike Jared Kushner, I've never received money from a foreign government. He –

Hunter was cut off in his response on this occasion, as he was on a second occasion when he tried to point out that Kushner flew to Saudi Arabia and “picked up $2 billion.” 

“No, no, no, no, no, no. Not ‘okay,’” Hunter replied after Rep. Harriet Hageman implied he had taken money from Romania. “I never worked for a country. I am not Jared Kushner. I never got money from a country. Not one foreign government ever gave me money, guys—none, zero, not one.” 

When it came time for questions from Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, the back and forth showed just how small everything under investigation was when compared to what the Republicans refused to look into.

Swalwell: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?

Hunter: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.

Swalwell: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?

Hunter: No.

Swalwell: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family? 

Hunter: No. And I don't think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.

Swalwell: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?

Hunter: No, he has not, thank God.

Swallwell: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion-dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?

Hunter: No.

Swalwell: That's all I've got.

A number of moments in the hearing are eye-rolling, and a number are heartbreaking. Hunter Biden never once shies away from explaining the devastating effect his addiction to drugs had on his life, how he struggled for recovery, and how he wanted to make his parents proud. Republicans constantly tried to get him to admit that his drug use made him worthless as a means of showing that he had no value to the companies he dealt with, but Hunter constantly refused to give them what he wanted.

In the end, two statements from Hunter Biden’s opening remarks may be the best representation of what this hearing was all about, and how despicable it is that this Republican smear campaign has gone on so long.

Hunter: You have built your entire partisan house of cards on lies told by the likes of Gal Luft, Tony Bobulinski, Alexander Smirnov, and Jason Galanis. Luft, who is a fugitive, has been indicted for his lies and other crimes; Smirnov, who has made you dupes in carrying out a Russian disinformation campaign waged against my father, has been indicted for his lies; Bobulinski, who has been exposed for the many false statements he has made; and Galanis, who is serving 14 years in prison for fraud. 

Rather than follow the facts as they've been laid out before you in bank records, financial statements, correspondence, and other witness testimony, you continue your frantic search to prove the lies you and those you rely upon keep peddling. Yes, they are lies.

And finally, Hunter Biden gave what might be the most important statement of the day, one that should resonate with anyone in any party.

Hunter: During my battle with addiction, my father was there for me. He helped save my life. His love and support made it possible for me to get sober, stay sober, and rebuild my life as a father, a son, a husband, and a brother. What he got in return for being a loving, supportive parent is a barrage of hate-filled conspiracy theories that hatched this sham impeachment inquiry and continue to fuel unrelenting personal attacks against him and me.

If the goal of the deposition was to make Joe Biden seem like an even better father, Republicans succeeded. 

🚨BREAKING🚨: Ranking Member @RepRaskin issued the following statement after Committee Republicans released the transcript from the deposition with Hunter Biden: https://t.co/gQHkCAGkmC pic.twitter.com/wzn878GLBq

— Oversight Committee Democrats (@OversightDems) March 1, 2024

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Republicans proceed with impeachment effort to spread Russian disinformation

The biggest story of the week, the month, and perhaps the rest of 2024 should be the fact that Republicans predicated their entire impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden on information provided to them by an agent of the Russian government.

Instead, yet another Russian incursion into American politics directly facilitated by Republican officials is falling flat.

Let's take a moment to review the situation with national security expert and ABC News analyst Asha Rangappa, who tweeted, "For real, can we recap: Sitting members of Congress initiated IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS against a U.S. President based on information passed to them by an agent of Russian intelligence. Same members refuse to pass aid to Ukraine. Same members defend Trump."

For real, can we recap: Sitting members of Congress initiated IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS against a U.S. President based on information passed to them by an agent of Russian intelligence. Same members refuse to pass aid to Ukraine. Same members defend Trump. ….

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) February 21, 2024

It's not just that congressional Republicans like House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and veteran GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa spouted disinformation from a Russian mole: It's that the claim made by the Russian mole was laughable on its face.

As The Bulwark's Tim Miller recounted on "The Next Level" podcast, "This idea that Joe Biden is a master criminal, and he has like a web of bank accounts that are so ... complex ... it would take the FBI and the CIA 10 years to unravel Joe Biden—Joseph Robinette Biden's scheme?"

Miller recalled thinking, no way, "This is crazy."

But not congressional Republicans. They made the claims of FBI informant Alexander Smirnov central—indeed, indispensable—to their case against Biden. 

In May, Comer told Fox News his committee was demanding the FBI release information it had gleaned from Smirnov.

"This is a very crucial piece of our investigation," Comer said.

Grassley took to the Senate floor to pressure the FBI to release the FD-1023 form supposedly detailing "a criminal bribery scheme" that included President Biden and his son, Hunter. Grassley claimed that information came from "a highly credible, long serving FBI confidential human source." 

Last year, Senator Grassley touted the now indicted informant. During the same speech he complained that Judiciary Committee Democrats described his investigation Russian disinformation. According to court filings, the source he’s referencing here has ties to Russian intelligence pic.twitter.com/Iqcy40xeG9

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 20, 2024

Oops, just kidding. 

But now that Smirnov has been indicted and revealed as a Russian agent, Republicans are trying to triage their impeachment inquiry instead of backing away from their disgraced probe of an American president whom they are smearing for political gain.

Comer told Newsmax Wednesday that Smirnov "wasn't an important part" of their investigation "because I didn't even know who he was."

Republicans are also scrubbing references of Smirnov from their investigatory materials, according to reporting from The New Republic's Tori Otten. 

Totally absent from this Republican debacle is any sense of contrition for their roles serving as stooges of the Kremlin in spreading a mountain of lies about a sitting U.S. president.

Comer, Grassley, and others should be fighting off calls for their resignations after betraying the country.

Instead, the impeachment show must go on for Republicans. Otherwise they will have no means by which to uncover and spread more Russian disinformation about their political rival, Joe Biden.  

Democratic voters know Joe Biden is old and MAGA voters like to pretend that Trump isn't just as long in the tooth. Both men were old the last time we did this and the only thing that’s changed is Biden is now a successful incumbent, while Trump is busy juggling trials and indictments.

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GOP senators demand impeachment trial as government shutdown looms

With a government shutdown looming, 13 Republican senators, led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Texas’ pretend cowboy Sen. Ted Cruz, released a letter they said they sent to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanding he make a big stink about holding an impeachment trial for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Lee even posted a copy of the letter with some vaguely legible signatures to his X (formerly Twitter) account. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to dismiss the bogus bit of political theater.

The Republican-led House was able to impeach Mayorkas after one embarrassing failure of an attempt, making it the first time a Cabinet official has been impeached in 150 years. The Senate GOP members making hay out of the impeachment process continue to remind the public how Democratic officials proved (and Republican officials admitted) the entire exercise was disingenuous.

The letter, which was signed by Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Eric Schmitt, Rick Scott, Ron Johnson, J.D. Vance, Roger Marshall, Josh Hawley, Mike Braun, Tommy Tuberville, Ted Budd, Cynthia Lummis, and Marsha Blackburn, contains a lot of what we have come to expect from the do-nothing Republican Party. The general pantomime of the GOP around the impeachment of Mayorkas involves an imaginary belief that the GOP is strong on border security. It is fitting that conservative senators like Lee, who voted against the bipartisan border security deal, would also spend their time trying to create a political theater production of impeachment instead of making the hard compromises and decisions needed to get things done.

Senators like Cruz have used their party’s disarray to take shots at current leaders like McConnell. On Sunday, Cruz told Fox News that “if Republican leadership in the Senate doesn’t like the criticism, here’s an opportunity to demonstrate some backbone.” Cruz and Lee are joined by self-promoters like Sen. Josh Hawley, who has had his own public spats with Republican leadership in recent months.

The government is set to shut down on March 1. House Republicans seem unable to chew gum and … chew gum. Senate Republicans who spent many decades in lockstep with McConnell’s leadership seem to have lost the ability to tie their shoes. The Senate is coming off of an 11-day recess. McConnell has not responded to inquiries from media outlets for his response to the letter as of the writing of this story.

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Ohhhhh yeah! Democrats kicked ass and then some in Tuesday's special election in New York, so of course we're talking all about it on this week's episode of "The Downballot." Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard explain how Tom Suozzi's win affects the math for Democrats' plan to take back the House, then dive into the seemingly bottomless list of excuses Republicans have been making to handwave their defeat away. The bottom line: Suozzi effectively neutralized attacks on immigration—and abortion is still a huge loser for the GOP.

House GOP can’t wait to have hearings on how old Biden really is

House Republicans aren’t even waiting for the Justice Department to respond to their demand for the transcripts of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. They are already planning the hearing with Hur probing into how old Biden really is. Hur has been preparing for his starring role.

Hur found no evidence against Biden in the documents-handling case he was investigating, which rose to a prosecutable level. But the former Trump official needed to do a solid for Republicans, so he added in a lot of gratuitous hits on Biden’s age in his report, which legal experts have called “a partisan hit job.”

According to Axios, Hur has been consulting with fellow former Trump official Sarah Isgur, who was Trump’s Department of Justice PR flak. Isgur has been helping him prepare to “navigate a congressional hearing.” Isgur has also been making the rounds of the Sunday shows and lying about Hur’s findings. Isgur said on ABC’s “This Week,” "They found evidence that (Biden) willfully retained national security information. And even probably beyond a reasonable doubt." The report actually said "we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt," hinting at just how much of a set-up for the GOP his report was.

Biden’s team was quick to respond to Axios: “As Hur mounts his campaign, there will be another story to tell—of Hur and his deputy being two aggressive political prosecutors from the Trump administration who decided to gun for Biden in an election year for their own political futures as Republicans.”

That will be an easy case for Biden and the Democrats to make since the hearings are going to be spearheaded by two of the Republicans’ most rabid and buffoonish characters, Reps. Jim Jordan and James Comer. The chairs of the Judiciary and Oversight committees, respectively, will fight it out to see who can be the most outrageous and ridiculous in their probes to find out just how old Biden is.

The honed and smart team of Democrats led by Rep. Jamie Raskin will continue to make a mockery of the Republicans. Their “Truth Squad,” which includes Reps. Greg Casar, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, Daniel Goldman, and Jared Moskowitz, has perfected their tactics to derail hearings and flummox Republicans. On these hearings, it’ll be a piece of cake.

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Speaker Mike Johnson finds time for impeachment stunt, but not to help Ukraine

House Speaker Mike Johnson has plenty of excuses for not taking up the Ukraine aid package the Senate passed early this week, saying that he’s just got too many serious issues on his plate to help in the fight for democracy against Russian totalitarianism. He told reporters Wednesday morning that “we have to address this seriously, to actually solve the problems and not just take political posturing as has happened in some of these other corners.”

Reporter: You yourself were part of killing the senate compromise bill. You say there need to be solutions, what are house Republicans doing to get to a solution on the border and on Ukraine? Or are you going to actually do nothing? pic.twitter.com/3CjaN9BCx0

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 14, 2024

Yes, he seriously accused Ukraine aid proponents of “political posturing” just hours after he led House Republicans in their second—barely successful—sham impeachment vote of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. By the way, that reporter’s question was spot on. Johnson effectively killed the original Senate bill that included a border security package by saying it would be dead on arrival in the House. Now he complains that the aid bill “has not one word about the border.”

Johnson also insists that he’s too busy figuring out how to avoid a government shutdown on March 1 and that it will take time for his team to “process” the Senate’s package. Guess what’s not on the House schedule this week? That’s right: Any appropriations bills to fund the government ahead of the looming deadline. Again, he was able to carve out more time to impeach Mayorkas and to force the Senate to deal with that just days before the government funding deadline.

The Senate is out until Feb. 26 and is going to have to deal with the Mayorkas impeachment as soon as they return. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer outlined the process in a statement, indicating that the House impeachment managers will “present the articles of impeachment to the Senate” as soon as they’re back in, and “[s]enators will be sworn in as jurors in the trial the next day.”

Which means two days of valuable Senate time will be wasted on this because the Senate will never vote to convict Mayorkas, but they have to deal with it anyway. They’ll dispense with it as quickly as the Senate can do anything, but they need every hour for the long process of passing the bills to keep the government from shutting down.

That process between the House and Senate is going nowhere fast because of all the poison-pill riders about abortion, contraception, and trans issues the House Republicans crammed into their spending bills.

On top of all that, Johnson—who just spent an embarrassing week and a half of floor time impeaching one of Biden’s cabinet members—is now demanding that Biden take him seriously and have a face-to-face meeting with him on the Ukraine bill. A White House spokesperson told NBC that Johnson “needed to wrap the negotiations he has having with himself and stop delaying national security needs in the name of politics.” Biden is not included to help Johnson out of this one.

“That body language says: ‘I know I’m in a tough spot. Please bail me out,’” one Democrat involved with the supplemental aid package told NBC.

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