The Biden impeachment resolution the House GOP unanimously approved last December has hilariously collapsed (Russian moles, sawdust “cocaine”), but that’s not stopping the utterly inept Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, from throwing spaghetti at the wall to make something stick. The chair of the House Oversight Committee made it clear that his intention is to amass as much “evidence” of alleged wrongdoing as he can, with an eye toward setting up criminal prosecutions for a hypothetical Trump presidency.
“Since January 2023, we’ve launched investigations into President Biden’s border crisis, energy crisis, federal pandemic spending, federal agency telework policies, abuse of power at the FTC, the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling schemes, the federal government’s efforts to combat CCP influence, and more,” Comer told Politico.
Those investigations, he promised, “will culminate in reports with our findings and recommended solutions to prevent government waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.” Expect that to be as solid as all the previous work from him and his fellow MAGA zealot Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee.
The “and more” Comer referred to includes such burning questions as the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic (which occurred under Trump) and the administration’s use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Comer has made it clear that this volley of attacks is designed to generate criminal referrals.
“I want to hold the Biden family accountable. I believe the best way to hold the Biden family accountable is through criminal referrals. We’ve proven many crimes have been committed,” Comer told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy. “If the Merrick Garland Department of Justice will not hold this family accountable, then maybe if Trump is president, a Trey Gowdy Department of Justice can hold this family accountable.”
The Comer oversight overreach extends to a threat to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt if he doesn’t turn over the audio tapes of the interview special counsel Robert Hur conducted with President Biden in his classified documents probe. That’s after the disastrous hearing Jordan and Comer held last month, intended to show that Biden is too old and doddery to be trusted as commander in chief.
That backfired when the Justice Department released the transcript of the Biden interview, which showed that Biden’s memory was not failing, and in fact Hur remarked on Biden’s “photographic understanding and, and recall of the house” in Delaware where documents were found. But Comer and Jordan—who have been given free rein by GOP leadership to continue to embarrass them all—are sure that they can find some nugget of a cover-up on the part of Garland in all of this.
Mostly, though, they want to help Trump in his revenge plots. So they’re just going to keep burrowing into the hole they’ve dug. They could quit while they’re behind, but the need to avenge Trump just won’t let them.
If Rep. Jared Moskowitz hadn’t won election to the House for Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, he might have been a roast master. Moskowitz has a special knack for mocking MAGA House Republicans, particularly Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
On Wednesday, Moskowitz wanted to make a point about just whose bidding Comer was doing before heading into a hearing on “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office.” The hearing was yet another chapter in House Republicans’ failing and increasingly embarrassing attempt to use allegations about Hunter Biden’s business dealings to impeach the president.
Moskowitz showed up for the hearing wearing a mask of Russian President Vladimir Putin as he walked down the hallway. House Democrats have accused Comer and other Republican committee members of spreading Russian disinformation about the Bidens.
A reporter asked Moskowitz: “Congressman, can you explain what you are wearing?”
And acting in character, Moskowitz replied: “I just came to thank James Comer for taking all of our intelligence and using it in the committee. Maybe he can come see the technology in our grocery stores. Thank you.”
That reference to grocery stores was a dig at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who, during his visit to Moscow to interview Putin, posted a widely mocked video in which he praised a Russian grocery store for its low prices.
Another reporter then asked Moskowitz: “Congressman, don’t you think this behavior is kind of immature?”
Moskowitz did not reply and could be seen removing the mask as he entered the chamber.
Moskowitz’s masking was intended to draw attention to recent developments in the Biden impeachment inquiry when Republicans’ key witness, Alexander Smirnov, was arrested and accused of lying to authorities about a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine. Then prosecutors revealed that Smirnov claimed extensive foreign contacts, including to officials linked to Russian intelligence, portraying him as part of an ongoing foreign plot to spread disinformation and interfere with U.S. democracy.
So far, the exhaustive and lengthy investigation by House Republicans has not turned up any substantial evidence showing that President Biden engaged in any wrongdoing.
All joking aside, Moskowitz can be serious too. This is what he said about the impeachment inquiry in February during a CNN Interview:
Moskowitz: When did James comer know this was false? And how long did he conceal that from the American people? Those are he'll questions we need to get to the bottom of. When did he find out that this was a lie.. and they were still using this information pic.twitter.com/uFA2AJlYEu
But Moskowitz, a member of the committee, often uses humor to make his point. After Smirnov’s arrest was revealed, Moskowitz mocked Comer with a gif of the “you sit on a throne of lies” line from the movie film “Elf.”
“The witness of the FD-1023 form was just indicted for making it all up,” wrote Moskowitz, who quoted a post by Comer where he cited an FBI form that documented Smirnov’s claims.
And back in November, when Moskowitz brought up allegations about Comer’s own business dealings with his brother, Comer said the Florida Democrat looked like a “Smurf.” To which Moskowitz responded on X: “Gargamel was very angry today.”
During another hearing, Moskowitz expected that one of the Republicans on the committee might attack Hunter Biden for naked photographs reportedly found on his laptop, The Daily Beast reported. So he was prepared when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia whipped out the nude photos of Hunter Biden at the January hearing. Moskowitz then held up an enlarged photo of Trump with his arm around convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
He told Greene: "You come up here and talk about Hunter Biden’s behavior, and you’re so disgusted, but the guy that you all kneel to associates himself with a pedophile.” Moskowitz told The Daily Beast at the time that it’s the Democrats’ job to give the committee’s Republicans a “taste of their own medicine.”
“They’ve decided to turn it into Cirque du Soleil Oversight where literally, it’s just a total show,” Moskowitz said. “If that is the game that they are going to play, then game on.”
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.
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.
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.
Hunter Biden appeared Wednesday on Capitol Hill for a closed-door deposition with lawmakers, a critical moment for Republicans as their impeachment inquiry into his father and the family's business affairs teeters on the brink of collapse.
“I am here today to provide the committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter Biden said in an opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.
The deposition could mark a decisive point for the 14-month Republican investigation into the Biden family, which has centered on Hunter Biden and his overseas work for clients in Ukraine, China, Romania and other countries. Republicans have long questioned whether those business dealings involved corruption and influence peddling by President Joe Biden, particularly when he was vice president.
Yet after conducting dozens of interviews and obtaining more than 100,000 pages of documents, Republicans have yet to produce direct evidence of misconduct by the president. Meanwhile, an FBI informant who alleged a bribery scheme involving the Bidens — a claim Republicans had cited repeatedly to justify their probe — is facing charges from federal prosecutors who accuse him of fabricating the story.
Despite the stakes of their investigation, it remains unclear how much useful information Republicans will be able to extract from Hunter Biden during the deposition. He is under federal investigation and has been indicted on nine federal tax charges and a firearm charge in Delaware, which means he could refuse to answer some questions by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights.
The task of interviewing Hunter falls primarily to Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, the GOP chairmen leading the impeachment investigation. They first subpoenaed Hunter Biden in November, demanding that he appear before lawmakers in a private setting. Biden and his attorneys refused, warning that his testimony could be selectively leaked and manipulated. They insisted that Hunter Biden would only testify in public.
On the day of the subpoena, Hunter Biden not only snubbed lawmakers waiting for him in a hearing room — he did also while appearing right outside the Capitol, holding a press conference where he denounced the investigation into his family.
Both sides ultimately agreed in January to a private deposition with a set of conditions. The interview with Hunter Biden will not be filmed and Republicans have agreed to quickly release the transcript.
“Our committees have the opportunity to depose Hunter Biden, a key witness in our impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, about this record of evidence,” Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “This deposition is not the conclusion of the impeachment inquiry. There are more subpoenas and witness interviews to come.”
Hunter will be the second member of the Biden family questioned by Republicans in recent days. They conducted a more than eight-hour interview last week with James Biden, the president's brother. He insisted to lawmakers that Joe Biden has “never had any involvement," financially or otherwise, in his business ventures.
Looming large over the interview are developments on the other side of the country in Nevada, where federal prosecutors this month indicted an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who claimed there was a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the president, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company. Prosecutors in court documents assert that Smirnov has had “extensive and extremely recent" contact with people who are aligned with Russian intelligence.
Smirnov's attorneys have said he is presumed innocent.
Republicans pressed the FBI last summer over the informant's claims, demanding to see the underlying documents and ultimately releasing the unverified information to the public. The claim was cited repeatedly in letters that House Republicans sent to impeachment witnesses.
Many GOP lawmakers say they have yet to see evidence of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment, despite alleged efforts by members of the Biden family to leverage the last name into corporate paydays domestically and abroad.
But the Republican chairmen leading the impeachment effort remain undeterred by the series of setbacks to their marquee investigation. Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said last week that the informant's indictment “does not change the fundamental facts” that the Biden family tried to benefit off the family name in several overseas businesses.
And Comer told Fox News on Tuesday that Smirnov was never “a key part of this investigation."
Both Comer and Jordan have insisted for the past year that their investigation and inquiry is focused solely on Joe Biden and what actions, if any, he took while as vice president or president to benefit his family. But at nearly every turn, their probe has had a consistent and heavy focus on Hunter Biden. Several lines of inquiry have been opened into Hunter's international business affairs, his artwork sales and even his personal life and on-and-off battle with addiction.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden has no shortage of legal headaches off Capitol Hill as he faces criminal charges in two states from a special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges late last year, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over three years.
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. ….
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
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.
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.
Approximately 153,000 people are about to have their year made by President Joe Biden’s student debt relief. Click to see if you or a loved one might qualify.
On Wednesday, the Republican-led House of Representatives impeachment inquiry will question James Biden behind closed doors on the very critical matter of how he repaid a loan to his brother. Banking records have already revealed that there is absolutely nothing to find in this investigation. Joe Biden loaned his brother James $200,000. Two months later, James paid him back. Neither did one thing wrong.
This hearing is a perfect example of why everyone called before this inquiry should demand to testify publicly. Not only has House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer accused both the president and Democrats in Congress of lying about the loan, even though Comer already had all the evidence in hand to show everything was accurate and above board, but Democrats are being denied their rightful opportunity to rub Republican noses in the ugly collapse of every piece of “evidence” behind this so-called investigation.
In the last few days, the FBI form that Republicans demanded to see, then released themselves after threatening to hold the FBI director in contempt, turns out to be the product of a Russian mole who was fed false information by Russian agents. Meanwhile, a picture of “cocaine” that was included in a court filing in charges against Hunter Biden turns out to be an image of sawdust.
The only real questions that remain in this investigation are: How much did James Comer, Jim Jordan, and Chuck Grassley know, and when did they know it?
In 2019, Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine on orders from Donald Trump and came back with a story. That story was so ludicrous that everyone passed on it, including Fox News. But there was one place where Giuliani could still get this mess published: The New York Times.
According to that story, Joe Biden went to Ukraine and demanded the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because Shokin was investigating Burisma, the energy company where Hunter Biden served on the board. Biden allegedly threatened to withhold U.S. aid from Ukraine until Shokin was canned so Hunter could continue to collect his paycheck, and this oh-so-good prosecutor was unjustly fired.
The Times ran the story verbatim, without seeming to do anything like check Giuliani’s sources or look at public records. However, within a few days, Bloomberg dispatched a reporter to Ukraine to check on what Giuliani was selling, and sure enough, it was all bullshit.
Not only had Shokin not been investigating Burisma, he was so notoriously corrupt that officials in both the U.S. and the U.K. called for his removal for years. Biden didn’t start the push to remove Shokin, and he didn’t act alone. Everything that happened in Ukraine was very public, and European officials celebrated when Shokin was finally sacked.
There was no story. There never had been a story. But that didn’t stop Republicans from continuing to repeat Giuliani’s fairytale.
Then a miracle happened. Republicans learned that the FBI had been given a tip about this subject, one that resulted in an FD-1023 form that seemed to back up everything Giuliani had said in 2019. Over objections from the FBI, Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Jim Jordan demanded the form. Then Grassley and Comer released the form to the public, and it became the beating heart of the Republican “impeachment investigation.”
And the form was perfect. Referring to Joe Biden as the “big guy” was in there. A claim that Hunter Biden was hired to "protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems” was right on the front page. The “17 recordings” of phone calls that supposedly included Joe Biden getting directly involved with his son’s business came from this form. Best of all, it included the claim that a Burisma executive complained about how "it cost 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another Biden.”
The form was everything. The absolute proof that Republicans wanted.
Except, of course, everything in it completely contradicted years of public records and statements from those involved. Republicans didn’t let that bother them. Comer defended this form repeatedly, calling Democrats who challenged its contents liars. Grassley declared the importance of those recordings mentioned in the form, even while admitting they might not exist. Jim Jordan practically quoted the form in his questioning of Devon Archer, and then lied about Archer’s testimony when it failed to match up.
Then last Thursday, Alexander Smirnov, the man behind that FD-1023, was charged with lying to the FBI and creating false records. According to CNN, Smirnov has informed investigators that he has “‘extensive and extremely recent’ contacts” with Russian spies. And in an interview after his arrest, Smirnov admitted that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1.”
“Businessperson 1” is Hunter Biden.
So, Republicans have not only spent the last year pressing an investigation of the president’s son largely instigated by a document that turns out to have been tailor-made for them by Russian intelligence, they opened an impeachment inquiry with a Russian agent as the “heart” of their investigation.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) on the indictment of ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov for lying about the Biden family: “It doesn’t change the fundamental facts.” Reporter: “Doesn’t change the facts? It does change the facts, because they’re no longer facts.” pic.twitter.com/M8Y2GtSci9
The answer to why the FBI was so reluctant to release the document is simple: They don’t release unfounded accusations (unless they come from James Comey or Robert Hur, of course). And that ongoing investigation that had Republicans so excited was the investigation of Smirnov, not Hunter Biden.
All of this was a lie, and Republicans knew it. Just ask one of the men who toured Giuliani around Ukraine in the first place.
The FBI had my communications with the CEO of Burisma since my arrest in 2019. The GOP received my communications with the CEO of Burisma during the first Trump impeachment in 2020. They all knew that the 1023 from Alexander Smirnov was a lie. Why did they continue this farce…
Republicans are plowing on, keeping up the pretense that this source they made such a big deal about for so long was just “ancillary” to their investigation into what they love to call “the Biden crime family.” They have other evidence, dammit. Like how Joe Biden once loaned his son some money for a truck.
But in the last day, another part of the investigation into Hunter Biden has crumbled into dust. As in sawdust.
Federal prosecutors mistakenly claimed in a court filing that a photo of sawdust they found while searching Hunter Biden's electronics was cocaine, attorneys for the president's son said Tuesday.
How anyone could have ever thought that this material, which was tan in color and sitting on a table saw, was anything other than sawdust is astounding. But a picture of any kind of dust seemed to be convincing to Sean Hannity, so Fox News audiences aren’t likely to be threatened by the truth. (This also raises questions about just what Hannity has been putting up his nose.)
A Russian agent. A fake document. A pile of sawdust. That’s what Republicans have to show for their big investigation.
It would be really great to hear what’s happening behind those closed doors today. Democrats should be having fun.
Who could have predicted that House Republicans would use special counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Joe Biden’s document handling for their political purposes? Hur found that while Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency,” there was not enough evidence to “establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
In the absence of actionable malfeasance on the document handling, Hur—a former United States attorney in Maryland, appointed by Donald Trump—did the next best thing he could for his Republican pals: the gratuitous hits on Biden’s age.
Enter three House committee chairs and a new avenue of investigation: Biden’s fitness as president. Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland Monday evening demanding both a transcript and any video recordings of Biden’s interview, with a Feb. 19 deadline for a response.
Axios reports that the Republicans are planning hearings starring Hur in which they will focus on Biden’s mental acuity, the national security implications of his document handling (to give “investigations” the gloss of legitimacy), and his fitness to lead. “Someone might ask him if Biden is unfit to lead,” a leadership source told Axios. “Give him a chance to frame it.”
Might? They “might” ask Hur about Biden’s fitness? They “might” take this chance to exploit Biden’s age, his biggest political liability with voters, and run with it? They absolutely will give Hur a microphone and put him in front of cameras and the traditional media will absolutely eat it up.
While Republicans are at it, Axios reports, they plan to go after Garland and how the Justice Department conducted the investigation. Call it Comer and Jordan’s revenge for the fact that they haven’t been able to get anything implicating Biden and his son Hunter from the Department of Justice for their sham impeachment.
Jordan and Comer have the blessing of their leadership to do this. Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, GOP Whip Tom Emmer, and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik released a statement last week calling Hur’s remarks on Biden’s age some of the “most disturbing parts” of the report. “A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office,” they said.
You might think that those four would have more pressing stuff to deal with, like the fact that there’s another government shutdown looming in a few weeks. Or maybe figuring out how to clean up the horrible messes Johnson has created with his inept leadership. Or just doing anything that would benefit the American people.
Actually, you probably wouldn’t think that. Why would they change course now?
The Republican Party’s evidence-less investigation of Hunter Biden’s business affairs continues to reveal … nothing new or criminal on the part of President Joe Biden. Rep. Andy Biggs is on the Republican Hunter Biden fishing expedition committee, which is chaired by Rep. James Comer. Biggs went on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” to discuss all of the nothing he has been able to find on Joe and Hunter Biden.
Biggs tells Dobbs that while they think Hunter Biden is guilty of something, they clearly do not have enough evidence to do anything legal about it. Dobbs, whose painting of Howdy Doody in the attic must look ancient by now, seems pretty fed up with it all.
Congressman, I have to say to you, it sounds to me like we're right where we were six months ago. It really does. I don't see any advancement in this, and a progress toward incriminating evidence for the president. I mean, what we're talking about is a stasis. It's as if everything is frozen right there in time, waiting for either contradiction, invalidation of these statements by people, that I think everyone would assume common sense tells you that they're lying through their teeth and trying to protect someone. But that's insufficient.
It’s hard to argue against the fact that every witness Comer and others have claimed would provide the smoking gun evidence against President Joe Biden has fallen flat or had it blow up in their faces. In fact, these witnesses have ended up supporting the idea that Biden didn’t do anything wrong in regards to supporting his wayward son.
Oversight Democrats, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, have continued to point out that real issues of oversight remain untouched by the Republican-led committees in the House. Issues like the catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last year. GOP leaders like Donald Trump were quick to blame Joe Biden and fundraise a lot of cash on the tragedy, but were unwilling to lift a finger to investigate what could be done to mitigate such disasters in the future.
Republicans and their propaganda outlets have been screeching about how much of a crisis there is on the border, and how badly we need security. Instead of working out a deal, House Republicans begin a constitutionally dubious impeachment stunt against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Then when Senate Democrats worked out a deal with Senate Republicans—a deal that is in no way progressive but might at least help fulfill some of our promised foreign aid obligations—Republicans turned around and tried to kill it.
The Republican Party is a depressingly dangerous political theater troupe at this point. The only thing they seem able to do now is demand action, create committee witch hunts, and when Democratic lawmakers and Joe Biden call them on their bluster, become impotently angry. Whether Dobbs’ seeming exhaustion is indicative of a meaningful trend among any of the people who still pay attention to him remains to be seen.
It is primary season, and Donald Trump seems pretty low energy these days. Kerry and Markos talk about the chances of Trump stumbling through the election season and the need to press our advantage and make gains in the House and Senate. Meanwhile, the right-wing media world is losing its collective minds about Taylor Swift registering younger Americans to vote!
