Democrats are blowing up House GOP efforts to take down Biden

Posted on January 25, 2024 by Mark Sumner

By now, anyone tuning into a House Oversight Committee or House Judiciary Committee hearing knows what to expect. With frequent slams of the gavel by their respective chairs, Republicans plod through repetitive attacks on President Joe Biden or waggle their fingers about some salacious claim including the phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop.” Democrats try to object and occasionally insert a fact. But the next Republican is at the mic five minutes later, once again hammering the same lies.

At least that’s how it used to be. But anyone who has tuned in recently may have noticed a big change.

Democrats aren’t just tearing Republican arguments apart: They’re derailing hearings and getting their opponents genuinely flustered. The recent hearing in which Republicans intended to charge Hunter Biden with contempt for declining to testify behind closed doors is a good example. Not only did Hunter make a brief personal appearance and offer to testify right then and there in public, but Democrats were able to consistently throw Republicans off their game, blow away false evidence, expose their hypocrisy, and even hammer Donald Trump.

If all that seemed like it took a lot of behind-the-scenes planning, it did. But it won’t be the last time. Because as The Daily Beast reports, Democrats have a plan to make these hearings just as silly as the claims Republicans are making about Biden.

As soon as they gained control of the House in 2023, Republicans launched a series of supposed investigations into President Biden. And his children. And his brother. And anyone else they can lump in to the “Biden Family Investigation.”

For months, Rep. James Comer, who is heading up investigations in the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Jim Jordan, who has the same role for the House Judiciary Committee, have been releasing false claims and mischaracterizing innocuous issues like a father loaning his son money for a car payment. But Republicans didn’t let having zero evidence stop them from announcing an impeachment inquiry in December.

The investigations have a clear goal: to reduce Biden’s chances of reelection and to signal to Trump that they’re trying to get revenge for his two impeachments. Republicans likely feel like these endless investigations worked well for them before the 2016 elections, when they spent two full years hectoring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Benghazi.

But this time around, the whole thing, whether it’s Republicans badgering an art dealer who sold some of Hunter’s paintings, a disappearing informant, or flashing revenge porn on the floor of the House, has been ridiculous from start to finish. The House GOP has been on a year-long fishing expedition featuring a level of obsession that would embarrass Captain Ahab, and they haven’t even found a minnow.

As Republicans ramped up the Biden attacks, Democrats responded. Rep. Jamie Raskin put together a “Truth Squad” that includes Reps. Greg Casar, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, Daniel Goldman, and Jared Moskowitz. If some of those names sound familiar, it’s because they’ve been front and center in disrupting Republican plans.

It was Crockett who forcefully kicked off a confrontation with Rep. Nancy Mace who, on a committee where every Republican member is white, accused Hunter Biden and Democrats of engaging in “white privilege.” Crockett forced Mace to try and defend her indefensible remarks, and then Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the gate closed by pointing out how Mace voted to eliminate the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights.

As The Daily Beast article highlights, Moskowitz was on hand with a poster showing a chummy photo of Trump and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein when it seemed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was going to once again show nude pictures of Hunter Biden. “You come up here and talk about Hunter Biden’s behavior and you’re so disgusted,” said Moskowitz, “but the guy that you all kneel to associates himself with a pedophile.”

Those quick responses, along with Hunter Biden staring down Republicans from the visitor section, became the most viral moments from the hearing. Put together with sharp responses from other Democrats who refused to play Comer’s game, Republicans were left looking like this:

MAGAt House hearing. A picture is worth 1 MILLION words. EVERY hearing Comer has had, has been a disaster. Hunter Biden showed up at the hearing and spooked the MAGAts. Then they got a tongue lashing from @RepRaskin @RepJaredMoskowitz @RepJasmine Comer knew it was a disaster! pic.twitter.com/mRSCu5am0j
— Charm | DEMOCRATS deliver & NO CHAOS! 🇯🇲 💙🌊 (@CharmRobinson3) January 10, 2024

The best thing to come from all this is that Raskin and the Democrats have been joined by a new set of critics attacking Comer and his pointless investigation. As Kerry Eleveld reported earlier, Republicans are none too happy that this absurd “investigation” has gone on so long and come up so dry.

“James Comer continues to embarrass himself and House Republicans. He screws up over and over and over," said a source identified as "close" to House GOP leadership, who appeared to be playing CYA for the leadership team. The source's big fear was that Comer would ultimately fail to provide the foundation necessary (i.e. evidence) to follow through with impeaching Biden.

These anonymous Republicans don’t seem to be seriously considering that maybe Comer is failing not because he’s incompetent (or at least, not only because he’s incompetent) but because Joe Biden did nothing wrong. But then, they are Republicans. They’re used to having leaders whose closets are jam-packed with skeletons.

Republicans are trying to repeat their perceived success with Benghazi, but this time Democrats know the game and they have a plan to disrupt it. That plan isn’t necessarily convincing Republicans that Biden did nothing wrong, but it sure is making these hearings more fun to watch.

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New report shows Mike Johnson’s role as pivotal ‘architect’ of 2020 election denial efforts in House

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Charles Jay

Mild-mannered House Speaker “MAGA” Mike Johnson is not a headline-seeking showboater when it comes to election denialism. Instead, he largely avoided attention as he worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And now he’ll be holding the gavel when the House reconvenes on Tuesday with one of its main priorities being continuing the baseless impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.

You won’t find Johnson engaging in over-the-top provocative actions, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did when she posed with QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley during a December meeting in Arizona of Turning Point USA, a right-wing youth group. And on Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson avoided direct involvement in the “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House that ended in the attack on the Capitol. But he did play a key role in providing the legal fig leaf that enabled 147 Republican lawmakers—139 House members and eight senators—to vote against approving the Electoral College count and Joe Biden’s victory.

Johnson was not among the six Republican lawmakers—including current House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio and Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona—who were subpoenaed to appear before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Johnson received just one passing mention in the committee’s final report, Politico reported.

But a report released last week by the Congressional Integrity Project to mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection highlighted Johnson’s role as “congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, advocating an interpretation of the Constitution so outlandish that not even the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority could swallow it,” reported the Brennan Center for Justice.

Politico wrote:

A relatively junior House Republican at the time, Johnson was nevertheless the leading voice in support of a fateful position: that the GOP should rally around Donald Trump and object to counting electoral votes submitted by at least a handful of states won by Joe Biden.

And The New York Times said:

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was the most prominent public face of the congressional effort to fight the results of the 2020 election, his mentee, the newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson, was a silent but pivotal partner.

So let’s take a closer look at Johnson’s record as a propagator of the Big Lie, because it exposes the danger of what might happen if there is another close presidential election and the GOP retains control of the House with Johnson as speaker.

“You don’t want people who falsely claim the last election was stolen to be in a position of deciding who won the next one,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The Associated Press.

“Johnson is more dangerous because he wrapped up his attempt to subvert the election outcomes in lawyerly and technical language,” Hasen said.

Before being elected to Congress in 2016, Johnson, a constitutional law attorney, served as senior legal counsel from 2002-2010 for the Alliance Defense Fund (now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom), a Christian conservative legal advocacy group that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Johnson himself wrote opinion pieces against marriage equality and endorsing briefs filed by the ADF meant to criminalize sexual activity between consenting adults, Rolling Stone reported. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated the ADF as a hate group in 2016.

So it was no surprise that Johnson sent out this tweet on Nov. 7, 2020, when media outlets largely called the race for Biden:

I have just called President Trump to say this: "Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans' trust in the fairness of our election system."
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 7, 2020

Two days later, Johnson sent out another tweet indicating that he was in regular contact with Trump:

President Trump called me last night and I was encouraged to hear his continued resolve to ensure that every LEGAL vote gets properly counted and that all instances of fraud and illegality are investigated and prosecuted. Fair elections are worth fighting for!
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 9, 2020

Politico wrote that in an interview with a Louisiana-based radio host on Nov. 9, Johnson added details on his call with Trump and made clear that “they already had their eye on a Supreme Court showdown.” Johnson said he thought “there’s at least five justices on the court that will do the right thing.”

Then on Nov. 17, Johnson repeated the debunked claim put forth by Trump lawyers that there was an international conspiracy to hack Dominion voting machines so Trump would lose the election, The Associated Press reported. The AP quoted Johnson as saying:

“In every election in American history, there’s some small element of fraud, irregularity,” Johnson said in the interview. “But when you have it on a broad scale, when you have a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, when you have testimonials of people like this, it demands to be litigated.”

As more states moved to confirm their election results, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a hail-Mary lawsuit in early December asking the Supreme Court to reject the election results in four states carried by Biden—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—on the basis that those states introduced pandemic-related changes to election procedures that were illegal.

In Congress, Johnson, who had served on Trump’s first impeachment defense team in early 2020, helped lead the effort to get 126 Republican lawmakers to sign an amicus brief supporting the Texas lawsuit. Johnson tweeted:

President Trump called me this morning to let me know how much he appreciates the amicus brief we are filing on behalf of Members of Congress. Indeed, "this is the big one!" https://t.co/eV1aoNlpvq
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) December 9, 2020

Then on Dec. 11, in a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit. On Dec. 14, the electoral college members met in their states to cast their ballots for president. That same day Johnson said in a radio interview that Congress still had the final say on whether to accept Biden’s electors on Jan. 6, 2021, Politico reported.

On Jan. 5, Johnson met with fellow GOP House members in a closed-door meeting to discuss what they should do in Congress the next day.

Politico wrote:

”This is a very weighty decision. All of us have prayed for God’s discernment. I know I’ve prayed for each of you individually,” Johnson said at the meeting, according to a record of his comments obtained by POLITICO, before urging his fellow Republicans to join him in opposing the results.

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, just hours before the mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, Johnson tweeted:

Rep. Mike Johnson, Jan. 6, 2021: “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.” pic.twitter.com/4gTYgv3Pc8
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) October 25, 2023

After the mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, Johnson condemned the violence, according to The New York Times, but he defended the actions of Republican lawmakers to object to Biden’s victory. And when Congress reconvened, more than half of the House GOP caucus supported objections to Biden’s victory.

In an October 2022 report published weeks before the midterm election, The New York Times emphasized Johnson’s role in the vote:

In formal statements justifying their votes, about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Representative Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.

On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, he presented colleagues with what he called a “third option.” He faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional, without supporting the outlandish claims of Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters. His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case. …

Even lawmakers who had been among the noisiest “stop the steal” firebrands took refuge in Mr. Johnson’s narrow and lawyerly claims, though his nuanced argument was lost on the mob storming the Capitol, and over time it was the vision of the rioters — that a Democratic conspiracy had defrauded America — that prevailed in many Republican circles.

Johnson has not wavered from his position that he and other House GOP members had been right to object to the election results.

In its report, the Congressional Integrity Project noted that Johnson had voted against creating a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, calling it “a third impeachment.” He also voted against holding former White House adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee.

And just months before the House GOP caucus voted unanimously in October to install Johnson as speaker, he gave oxygen to the baseless conspiracy theory held by right-wing Republicans that federal agents orchestrated the Jan. 6 insurrection. He alleged that FBI Director Christopher Wray was “hiding something” about the FBI’s presence in the Capitol on Jan. 6, the Congressional Integrity Project reported.

In November, Johnson fulfilled a promise he made to far-right members of the House GOP caucus in order to secure the speaker’s post when he announced plans to publicly release thousands of hours of security camera video footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, blurring the faces of individual protesters. Earlier last year, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson used selectively edited security camera footage to make the claim that Jan. 6 was largely a peaceful protest and the demonstrators were “not insurrectionists, they were sightseers.”

In its report, the Congressional Integrity Project said one of the biggest dangers is that the attempted Jan. 6, 2021 coup never ended because Johnson and the same Trump allies behind that insurrection are now fully behind the sham Biden impeachment effort.

These Republicans include Johnson, Jordan, Comer, and such firebrands as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, the report said.

With the report, Kyle Herrig, the executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, issued a statement that read:

“The same MAGA Republicans who led Donald Trump’s deadly insurrection and attempt to overthrow an election he knew he lost, are the same ones pushing the bogus impeachment of President Biden. MAGA Republicans are a threat to all Americans and our democracy. They will stop at nothing to pursue their radical, out-of-touch agenda, including violence. All of their actions on behalf of the disgraced former president in an attempt to distract from his 91 criminal indictments and help him return to the White House in 2024—and they don’t care who stands in their way.”

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Ex-prosecutor on Hunter Biden case says GOP falsehoods have led to threats

Posted on December 17, 2023 by Charles Jay

Lesley Wolf worked in relative obscurity for nearly 16 years as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, but now the former federal prosecutor says she’s been threatened and harassed after Republicans falsely accused her of going easy on Hunter Biden.

In her prepared opening statement, released to the media, for a closed-door deposition demanded by House Republicans as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Wolf said:

“My desire to serve my community and my country, such a great source of pride, has recently come at significant cost. As a private person, the once routine and mundane details of my life have become the subject of public interest in an invasive and disturbing manner. Far worse, I have been threatened and harassed, causing me to fear for my own and my family’s safety.”

Her deposition on Thursday came a day after the House, on a party-line vote, formalized the Republican majority’s impeachment inquiry even though they haven’t found any evidence that the president benefited from his family’s foreign business dealings or accepted bribes.

Wolf joins the growing list of prosecutors, judges, obscure government officials, election workers, and others who have been targeted and harassed after incurring the wrath of former President Donald Trump and his minions—for merely doing their jobs.

RELATED STORY: Trump again threatens the media. Will the media care?

On Friday, a federal jury in Washington awarded $148 million in damages to two former election workers in Georgia—Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss—for the harm caused to them by defamatory statements made against them by disgraced former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani following the 2020 election.

Wolf’s problems arose simply because she happened to work for Delaware U.S. District Attorney David C. Weiss, a Donald Trump appointee, who first began investigating Hunter Biden’s financial dealings in late 2018. President Biden retained Weiss in his post so that he could continue the investigation of his son.

Wolf was part of the team that initially worked out a plea deal with Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges this summer. Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time. He also agreed to terms to avoid prosecution on a felony charge alleging that he falsely asserted that he was sober when he bought a handgun in 2018.

But the plea deal collapsed due to differences over the scope of immunity that Hunter Biden would have received from future investigations. In August, Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss to special counsel status in the investigation. In September, Weiss’ office indicted Hunter Biden on three felony counts for allegedly illegally purchasing the handgun.

Then, earlier this month, Weiss obtained an indictment from a federal grand jury in California, charging Hunter Biden with nine tax-related criminal charges, including three felony counts. Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said his client would not have been indicted if his surname were not Biden.

Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. And there was nothing in either indictment related to his father.

The president’s son declined to appear for a closed-door deposition in the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, holding a press conference outside the Capitol at which he said he would only testify in public—so Republicans couldn’t selectively leak excerpts from his testimony. House Republicans have threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee—who himself refused a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee—and other MAGA Republicans still feel that the DOJ has gone easy on Hunter Biden.

HuffPost:

Whistleblowers from the IRS’ criminal division claimed in congressional testimony this year that Wolf blocked them from pursuing certain search warrants and generally disagreed with their plans to be more aggressive in investigating the Biden family.

“She limited what they could do in their investigation,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of the leaders of the impeachment effort, said on Fox News in June, shortly before requesting a transcribed interview with Wolf and other officials. Jordan subsequently sent Wolf a subpoena.

On Thursday, Wolf joined the ranks of other Justice Department officials who’ve said that politics had nothing to do with their decisions in the Hunter Biden case.

After the hearing, Jordan complained to reporters that Wolf had refused to answer most of the questions she was asked during the deposition., NBC News reported.

But in her prepared opening statement, Wolf broadly defended her work and said she was bound by DOJ policies not to discuss an ongoing investigation.

“At all times while serving as an AUSA, I acted consistently with the Justice Manual, DOJ policy directives, and my statutory/legal and ethical obligations. I followed the facts where they led, and made decisions in the best interests of the investigation. This includes, but is by no means limited to, policies and rules governing politically sensitive investigations, election year sensitivities, attorney search warrants, search warrant filter requirements, and professional conduct rules barring contact with represented parties.”

Wolf also revealed that she had recently left her post as a federal prosecutor, but said her decision “was long pre-dated and was unconnected to the baseless allegations against me.” She said she “agreed to stay with the office months longer than planned because of my belief that my family and I were safer when I remained an AUSA.”

Fox News did not mention this in its online story, nor did that story mention the threats Wolf said she has received as a result of the allegations against her. Instead, its story was headlined: “Jordan says former prosecutor who allegedly scuttled Hunter investigation 'refused' to answer questions.”

Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Maryland Democrat, attended the deposition and said that Republicans kept asking Wolf about the Hunter Biden case during the four-hour-plus deposition. Huffpost reported:

“They kept showing her documents and things that they knew that she couldn’t comment on, asking her questions about the ongoing investigation, even though they knew she couldn’t comment on it,” Ivey said in an interview with the outlet.

Ivey does not believe that Republicans deliberately incited harassment against Wolf, but he said it was “irresponsible” for lawmakers to be putting people’s names out in the public to the extent that they have.

“They know at this point that when they put people’s names out there and connect them in these types of investigations, and make suggestions about them being involved in cover-ups and things like that, they know that this is going to be a consequence of that,” Ivey said.

Weiss voluntarily agreed to respond to the subpoena. She concluded her opening statement by observing all too accurately:

“I have no doubt that after today the threats and harassment and my own fear stemming from them will heighten exponentially. This not only scares me, but as someone who loves this country, it also breaks my heart. We are living in a day and age where politics and winning seem to be paramount and the truth has become collateral damage.”

A sad truth indeed.

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Everyone is picking on poor little Jimmy Comer

Posted on December 14, 2023 by Mark Sumner

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer should be celebrating. After all, he got what he wanted for Christmas on Wednesday when the House, in a party-line vote, handed him a no-evidence-required impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. Considering that all Comer has done since he took control of the committee is sift through the bank accounts of Biden family members, their friends, families of their friends, and friends of those friends, the House bill might as well have been stuffed straight into his … stocking.

But in an interview with Fox News on Thursday morning, Comer seemed more than a bit depressed. First, when asked about his best evidence that Biden might have done something wrong, Comer didn’t mention anything that he had come up with in his months of scanning bank accounts and going through over 100,000 documents. Instead, he repeated false claims that Rudy Giuliani brought back from Ukraine in 2019. Lies that were almost immediately debunked and that were thoroughly discredited again during Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo first asked Comer about an Associated Press story concerning his shell company, a piece of property that’s kept in his wife’s name, and some extremely shady connections. Comer insisted that the Associated Press is financially illiterate because this isn’t a shell company at all. It’s a land speculation LLC. Totally different thing.

Daily Kos has covered Comer’s not-a-shell-company before, including a series of land swaps among his family that definitely seem less than above board.

Much of Comer’s business activity seems to follow inheriting land in Kentucky following his father’s death in 2019. But exactly what happened with that land is the opposite of transparent. In one case, Comer reportedly sold his interest in a piece of land to his brother, then bought it back five months later, slipping his brother $18,000 in the process. That purchase ran through a shell company owned by Comer, the value of which doubled in two years. That company appears to have dealt exclusively with agricultural land deals at a time when Comer was on the House Agriculture Committee.

Of course, we did use the term “shell company.” Comer wants to pretend it’s not a shell company, because it controls all of six acres, so it has assets. But those six acres (now five, since one acre has since been sold off) are only a small fraction of the value that runs through this shell company.

But Comer’s ridiculous claims and finger-pointing at Biden seems to satisfy Bartiromo, who then turned to an even more critical question.

“Do you think that this is the media trying to begin to muddy up Republicans,” asked the Fox host, “or continue to muddy up Republicans because you are getting so close to your target that you have actually been able to release all this evidence on the Biden family? That now the White House is maybe calling media to try and plant these stories?”

Bartiromo casually tosses out a conspiracy theory that "the White House is calling media" to plant negative stories about Comer pic.twitter.com/3AQFnoyw2E
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 14, 2023

Comer was quick to not just agree but to elaborate on this conspiracy theory. “It comes from the White House. They have their own war room. They have two dozen people we’re paying tax dollars in there so they can attack the investigators.”

Comer went on to complain about the media attacking him and Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. “This is the biggest public corruption scandal of my lifetime,” Comer said.

Things are so bad that Comer is even afraid to go on “Fox & Friends.” According to The Hill, Comer declared that he wouldn’t return to the show after co-anchor Steve Doocy said that Comer’s investigation had “got a lot of ledgers and spreadsheets, but they have not connected the dots.” Which is the truth. But then, Comer’s relationship with the truth is like the connection between vampires and sunlight.

And after all, it’s not as if Comer has ever done anything wrong. Such as sending this note to a legitimate whistleblower seeking to report sexual abuse when Comer was in the Kentucky legislature.

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House approves impeachment inquiry into President Biden as Republicans rally behind investigation

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Associated Press

The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.

Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.

The decision to hold a vote came as House Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden's family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson called it “the next necessary step" and acknowledged there are “a lot of people who are frustrated this hasn’t moved faster.“

In a recent statement, the White House called the whole process a “baseless fishing expedition” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.”

House Democrats rose in opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday.

“This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said during a floor debate.

Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden's impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.

“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.”

Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership's recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.

A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.”

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about.”

“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. "Let's see what they find out.”

House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.

“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”

Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the president and his administration's cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.

Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the president's son, Hunter Biden.

While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden's taxes and his gun use.

Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the 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 last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.

Democrats have conceded that while the president's son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.

“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.”

Hunter Biden arrived for a rare public statement outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president's son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs.

His attorney has offered for Biden to testify publicly, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony.

“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”

GOP lawmakers said that since Hunter Biden did not appear, they will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against him. “He just got into more trouble today,” Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Committee chairman, told reporters Wednesday.

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Hunter Biden surprises Republicans by showing up at Capitol to do the one thing they didn’t want

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Mark Sumner

Hunter Biden was scheduled to appear before a House committee on Wednesday and answer questions in a closed-door session. Instead, President Joe Biden’s son did the one thing that Republicans were desperately trying to avoid: He spoke in public.

Hunter has offered to appear before the House Oversight Committee in an open public session. He offered to testify on Wednesday or on any day that the committee’s chair, Rep. James Comer, might suggest. But Comer was horrified by the idea. He and the other Republicans on the committee want Hunter in a closed session so they can bury any exculpatory evidence, selectively leak fragmented quotes to feed their baseless "impeachment inquiry," and release carefully edited snippets of themselves haranguing the president’s son for their 2024 campaigns.

Expectations were that Hunter Biden would not show today, but he surprised everyone by appearing, though not in the star chamber that Republicans wanted. Instead, he stepped in front of the U.S. Capitol—and the cameras—to speak openly to the public. And Republicans will be upset about what he had to say.

“I’m here today to see that the House committees’ illegitimate investigations of my family do not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence, and lies,” said Hunter Biden. “And I’m here today to acknowledge that I’ve made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities and privileges I was afforded. For that, I am responsible. For that, I am accountable. And for that, I’m making amends.”

YouTube Video

His appearance on Capitol Hill drew widespread press attention. Even Fox News ended up running a portion of what he had to say, though their YouTube clip of his remarks cut off his opening words.

“For six years, MAGA Republicans, including members of the House committees who are in a closed-door session right now, have impugned my character, invaded my privacy, attacked my wife, my children, my family, and my friends,” Hunter continued. “They’ve ridiculed my struggle with addiction, they’ve belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me—all to embarrass and damage my father, who has devoted his entire public life to service.”

In describing the actions of Reps. Comer, Jim Jordan, and other Republicans on the committees, Hunter pulled no punches.

“They have lied, over and over, about every aspect of my personal and professional life—so much so that their lies have become the false facts believed by too many people,” he said. As he went on listing some of the actions Republicans have taken in their efforts to demean and degrade him, he reached a point where he became clearly emotional. “They have taken the light of my dad’s love, the light of my dad’s love for me, and presented it as darkness. They have no shame.”

Hunter’s statement is absolutely worth listening to in full. It effectively rebutted both the nature and the content of the House proceedings on a day when Republicans intend to turn their mock investigation into a formal impeachment inquiry.

To say that Republicans weren’t pleased about having their game laid out in public is putting it mildly. Jordan and Comer hustled out to give an erratic press conference and threaten Hunter Biden with contempt proceedings.

Jim Jordan big mad over Hunter. pic.twitter.com/m7z1vBl4Tt
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 13, 2023

And if it weren’t clear enough that this was all about trying to grab back some camera time, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to sleaze her way in. The result was an abrupt end to the hallway gathering as even Jordan and Comer tried to run from Greene’s Pizzagate-level conspiracy theories.

Marge Greene tries to butt into Comer and Jordan’s press conference and Jordan cuts her off and they walk away. pic.twitter.com/D5h4Sa1dUq
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 13, 2023

Hunter Biden’s surprise appearance was a broadside into Republicans’ planned day of waving false evidence and preparing for a vote to relabel their fishing expedition as a formal impeachment inquiry. They should be ashamed, but as Hunter said, “They have no shame.”

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House Republicans to hold vote formalizing Biden impeachment inquiry

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Mark Sumner

After months of dedicated sleuthing by Rep. James Comer, Republicans have determined that President Joe Biden sometimes loans money to members of his family, and members of his family pay him back. That’s enough for Republicans to begin impeachment proceedings.

The vote on Wednesday will not mean that Biden is impeached. Instead, it will only put a formal stamp of approval on the work three Republican-led committees have conducted for the last year. That means Comer can continue waving around bank records showing that Hunter Biden paid back his father for a truck downpayment as if they are important. Rep. Jim Jordan can continue to chase Rudy Giuliani’s droppings and lie about activities in Ukraine that were debunked years ago. Only now both of them will officially be part of an impeachment inquiry instead of … whatever they’ve been doing all along.

While this proceeding won’t mean Biden has been impeached, that’s definitely where Republicans are going. Not because they have any evidence of wrongdoing, but because they want to please Donald Trump and give him ammunition for the upcoming election.

As The New York Times reports, despite having obtained 36,000 pages of bank records, Republicans have found no evidence that Joe Biden was enriched by the overseas business dealings of his son or any other family member. Republicans are left looking at $240,000 in money that Biden provided to other members of his family, which they paid back.

That’s it. That’s what they have on Biden.

None of that matters, because Republicans have already admitted why they are doing this. Rep. Troy Nehls told USA Today that they want to give the twice-impeached Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” and say that Biden was also impeached.

Rep. McGovern: "Trump says jump, the MAGA extremists say 'how high?' Donald Trump asks them to impeach Joe Biden, and here we are ... when this is all over, I'm confident that the American people will overwhelmingly agree that this whole impeachment stunt is a national disgrace." pic.twitter.com/qiR2T15a0A
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 12, 2023

Some Republicans will vote for this proceeding because they want to please Trump. Some will vote because they are terrified of Trump. Even the headline of The New York Times article gives the game away: “House set to approve Biden impeachment inquiry as it hunts for an offense.” They don’t have evidence of wrongdoing. They don’t even know what charge they are going to lay against Biden.

They just know they have to make some charge—because this vote isn’t about Biden at all. It’s about Trump.

Leader Jeffries: This impeachment inquiry is happening because the puppet-master-in-chief, former twice impeached so-called President of the United States has ordered them to launch it as a political hit job on President Biden pic.twitter.com/3S2aCbHiNx
— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) December 13, 2023

As Joan McCarter wrote yesterday, Republicans in the House are scrambling to announce themselves as loyal foot soldiers for Trump. Only one Republican representative, Freedom Caucus member Ken Buck of Colorado, is willing to write, “Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history.”

Months of witnesses. A hundred-thousand pages of documents. And Republicans have still come up empty.

It’s almost as if Joe Biden is an honest man who has spent his life in service to his nation. And it’s almost as if Republicans don’t care about that. They only care about showing their allegiance to a man who has already been found guilty of fraud and who is currently facing 91 felony charges.

According to the house schedule, votes on formalizing the impeachment inquiry will be held around 5 PM ET.

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Today in Congress: Johnson’s inexperience showing; Ukraine stalemate continues

Posted on December 7, 2023 by Joan McCarter

House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on a major defense and national security policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, on Wednesday. It’s likely to be the only legislative accomplishment they achieve before leaving for the the end of the year, if it does indeed pass. The bill authorizes nearly $900 billion in defense and national security, though it doesn’t include funding—it just directs where the eventual funding bill will be spent. What the new House-Senate conference report doesn’t do is overturn the Pentagon’s abortion policy or strip health care from transgender troops.

That’s enough to have members of the hard-right House, which loaded their version of the bill up with all those toxic provisions, howling and vowing to vote against the bill. The bigger problem in the House, though, is Speaker Mike Johnson’s bungling of another provision in the NDAA. The conference committee decided to add a short-term extension of the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers in the bill, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, after several misfires on the issue from Johnson.

In the course of the last week or so, Johnson has taken three different positions on getting that done. On Nov. 29, he said he wanted to include an extension of it until Feb. 2. Then on Tuesday of this week, he told the GOP conference that he would put two competing reauthorization bills—one from House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan and another from House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner—on the floor in a head-to-head matchup. Whichever bill got the most votes would be sent to the Senate. Punchbowl News reported that he had instructed the members of the defense authorization conference to keep the FISA extension out of the bill, and “got cheers from conservatives for this statement.” Then on Wednesday, he made a complete about-face, agreeing to include an extension of the surveillance powers until April.

That same day, Jordan’s committee passed his bipartisan overhaul of FISA in committee by a 35-2 margin. Jordan had every expectation of his bill passing and wanted it to go to the floor next week, as he thought Johnson had promised. That’s precisely the kind of indecision and flip-flopping that already has Johnson in trouble with his fractious caucus, and since they are all unappeasable, it’s not going to get any better for him.

The Senate took up the defense authorization on Thursday with the initial procedural vote, which gives Johnson the weekend to try to smooth ruffled feathers and get the bill done on their side next week, likely the last substantive thing that will happen before they leave for Christmas.

That’s the worry for Ukraine and other countries in need of aid: that the House will leave town before the Senate passes its $110.5 billion supplemental foreign assistance package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. There’s been no advance in the stalemate on that issue since GOP senators threw their border security tantrum Tuesday. It’s looking likelier by the day that the urgently needed aid for Ukraine is not going to be passed before the end of the year.

And when Congress returns in January, as Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington reminds everyone, they’re going to have to get serious about passing government funding. Her concern is that Johnson’s supposed fallback proposal—to just extend current funding until the end of the fiscal year—will end up being the default. "It’s dangerous and a non-starter," the Senate Appropriations Committee chair told Politico Wednesday. "Everybody needs to understand that it’s dangerous, and we can’t go there."

She’s right to be worried. The budget agreement that President Joe Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy made back in May tried to avert just that eventuality by levying cuts if lawmakers extended funding with continuing resolutions. The $777 billion now budgeted for non-defense programs would plummet to $704 billion if regular funding bills aren’t passed.

Murray is also right to be worried that it’s Johnson in charge of figuring this out for the House. His combination of inexperience and arrogance makes him an unpredictable and dangerous negotiating partner.

White House has things to say as Speaker Johnson reverses course on impeachment inquiry

The honeymoon is ending for Mike Johnson

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Latest letter to Hunter Biden is a prime example of Republican hypocrisy

Posted on December 7, 2023 by Mark Sumner

Republicans provided another textbook example of massive hypocrisy on Wednesday with a letter ordering Hunter Biden to appear for a hearing on Dec. 13. The letter to Hunter’s attorney says that he has no choice. He must appear for a closed-door deposition on that date or face contempt of Congress charges.

Hunter has offered to appear in a public hearing on any date, but Republicans have refused the offer. They want the session closed so that they can selectively dribble out fragments of this testimony they believe fit the narrative they have been building to impeach President Joe Biden. Rep. James Comer has been constructing his case against the president using increasingly ridiculous claims. This week included assertions that Hunter paying back his father for the downpayment on a truck allegedly showed that Joe Biden had received bribes from China.

But the biggest red flag of hypocrisy in the latest letter may be one of the signatures at the bottom. In addition to Comer, the letter was also signed by Rep. Jim Jordan. The same Jim Jordan who infamously refused to appear in response to a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee.

Jordan, who was heavily involved in the planning and execution of the attempted overturning of votes on Jan. 6, first insisted that he had “nothing to hide” about those events. But when the select committee investigating Jan. 6 asked Jordan to testify, he refused. That eventually led to Jordan being the subject of a congressional subpoena.

How did Jordan respond to his subpoena? With a list of demands before he would agree to talk. Jordan accused the select committee of “not operating in good faith,” and of being unfair. He insisted that investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a “legitimate task of Congress” because it did not “advance a legitimate legislative purpose.” Because of this, he claimed that both the committee and the subpoenas were unconstitutional. Jordan never appeared before the Jan. 6 select committee.

Jordan insists that investigating an insurrection that included an armed mob crashing through the doors of the Capitol is not part of Congress’ business. However, he apparently believes that checking out small personal loans between a father and son demands the attention of two House committees.

By the test that Jordan himself laid out: Exactly what legislative purpose does questioning Hunter Biden about his truck payments satisfy?

As Laura Clawson reported on Wednesday, Rep. Troy Nehls has made it explicitly clear why Republicans want Hunter Biden to come in. They want to launch an impeachment of Joe Biden, evidence or no evidence, so they can provide Donald Trump with “a little bit of ammo to fire back” going into the 2024 election.

This isn’t about any legitimate concerns over anything that either Hunter Biden or Joe Biden did. It’s about House Republicans trying to prove their loyalty to Trump and provide him with something to sneer over at the next rally.

Hunter Biden’s attorney has made it explicitly clear that Hunter Biden wants to testify publicly because Comer’s committee has demonstrated time and again that “it uses closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public—a hearing would ensure transparency and truth in these proceedings."

Both Comer and Jordan are aware that any hope they would really find something in these hearings to justify further action died over the summer when star witness Devon Archer blew a hole through false claims. They’ve found nothing, because there is nothing, even if Jordan keeps repeating false stories from Rudy Giuliani that were debunked four years ago.

Comer’s “investigation” is a farce. Jordan’s support is the height of hypocrisy. Together they are the Wonder Twins of the Republican House, shaping their committees into a footstool for Trump. Now they’ll get to pound their chests about why the evidence they say should be made public can’t be heard by the public.

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MAGA House: Impeachment or bust

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Joan McCarter

With just 12 legislative days scheduled the rest of the year, appropriations bills they can’t pass, a simmering civil war over the last continuing resolution to fund the government, and two more funding deadlines looming, House Republicans are laser-focused on one thing: impeaching President Joe Biden.

Leadership wants to make a decision on going forward with impeachment as soon as January, and they’ll figure out what they’re impeaching him over as they go along. At the moment, its allegations are that Biden used his political office to help his family’s business interests. Since their “evidence” tends to have to do with things Biden did when he was not holding political office, and those things are well documented and above board, that’s going to be a challenge.

The MAGA crew doesn’t care. They want this done now. “I think it needs to move with alacrity. I’ve always felt that we should be able to move faster. … But I do anticipate that it comes to Judiciary soon,” North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop, a Freedom Caucus member who sits on the Judiciary Committee, told Politico.

Another Judiciary Committee member, Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia, tried to take the high road talking to Politico, pretending as though this whole pursuit is about public service rather than Trumpian revenge. “We understand that the further you go toward an election, the more politicized these conversations become. That’s why it’s all the more important for us to begin to take action sooner rather than later.”

And if they can’t get Biden on any actual actions, they’re willing to go for the technicalities. “They’ve hinted that they could also draw obstruction allegations into the impeachment articles, citing any refusal by the Biden administration to cooperate,” Politico reports.

That might be one of the strategies behind the ridiculous subpoenas they’re piling up, the latest of which is for Lesley Wolf, the assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware who investigated Hunter Biden. They’re trying to find evidence of political interference in the federal investigation that began in 2018, under the Trump administration. When Joe Biden was not in office.

It’s not like they aren’t aware that this is a fraught issue for a good chunk of the GOP conference. “Any kind of an impeachment puts our Biden people in a really tough spot,” one GOP lawmaker told Politico, talking about the Biden 18 in particular. “Impeachment hurts us politically—it makes our base feel better.”

They know they’re hurting their members. They know they are only antagonizing the Senate, which will never take up impeachment articles even if the House manages to pass them, a very big if at this point. They also know they have an almost insurmountable amount of work to do between now and Jan. 19, when the first tranche of current government funding expires. On top of that, there’s aid to Israel and Ukraine.

The House GOP is flirting with their own political disaster. The impeachers believe they have an ally in new House Speaker Mike Johnson, but Johnson might be savvy enough to recognize that moving forward with impeachment articles will only rend the conference and give him a black eye he can ill afford going into an election year. But Johnson is “all in” for Trump, so no matter how baseless, toxic, and dangerous impeachment is, that’s probably where they’re headed.

Republican chaos is purposefully designed to dampen voter engagement

James Comer discovers another smoking water pistol

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We talk about North Carolina non-stop on "The Downballot," so it's only natural that our guest on this week's episode is Anderson Clayton, the new chair of the state Democratic Party. Clayton made headlines when she became the youngest state party chair anywhere in the country at the age of 25, and the story of how she got there is an inspiring one. But what she's doing—and plans to do—is even more compelling. Her focus is on rebuilding the party infrastructure from the county level up, with the aim of reconnecting with rural Black voters who've too often been sidelined and making young voters feel like they have a political home. Plus: her long-term plan to win back the state Supreme Court.

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