Top House Republican will never stop investigating Biden

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is the Energizer Bunny of investigating former President Joe Biden. His newest plan of attack is to examine Biden’s judicial appointments, pardons, and executive orders and, if any were signed with an autopen, they are “in jeopardy of being declared null and void in a court of law.” 

While Comer has enough juice to go forever, his tireless nature doesn’t make up for the fact that his ideas wouldn’t survive the scrutiny of a 10th-grade civics class. Comer can examine everything Biden ever wrote or signed or didn’t sign, and none of those things would mean that Biden’s judicial appointments could be undone. The only method to remove judicial appointees is the same as to remove Donald Trump: impeachment

During a softball appearance on Fox News, Comer was asked if he was looking into Biden’s judicial appointments and said he was investigating “everything that was signed with the autopen, especially in the last year of the Biden presidency.” While Comer was not explicitly asked about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, his whole “null and void” comment came right after a segment focusing on her. 

A cartoon by Tim Campbell.

It’s sheer buffoonery on Comer’s part to call Biden’s use of an autopen “the biggest scandal in the history of American politics.” Since Comer also thought that Trump’s insurrection was no big deal and Democrats had an “obsession with partisanship” in impeaching him, he has a peculiar idea of what constitutes a scandal.

Equally buffoonish is Comer’s attempt to explain when it’s totally cool to use autopens or digital signatures and when it is the greatest threat to the Republic imaginable. But Comer had to give it a try, given that NBC News found he used a digital signature on letters and subpoena notices related to the Biden probe—a signature inserted by someone other than Comer. 

But that’s fine because Comer always signs “legally binding subpoenas” with a wet signature, and how dare you compare that to the “unauthorized use of an autopen” in the Biden White House. Unauthorized by who, James?

Comer is also stuck with the fact that the Department of Justice approved the use of autopens in 2005, and Trump has admitted to using them as well. Nonetheless, Comer is soldiering on, insisting that if Biden didn’t have knowledge of executive orders signed with his name, it raises an issue of whether those orders are legal. Comer has floated this idea for a while now, telling Fox News last month that if Biden didn’t know about the orders, “then I think the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to execute his agenda a whole lot easier.”

Comer: "If we can find information that would lead us to believe that Joe Biden had no knowledge of those executive orders being signed in his name, then I think the Trump administration could get them thrown out in court, and then Trump would be able to executive his agenda a whole lot easier."

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-06-01T15:05:17.476Z

Quick, someone tell Comer how a president can undo an executive order issued by a former president. There’s literally nothing easier, as all it requires is the president to issue an order saying the previous executive order is now revoked. Whatever Comer perceives is preventing Trump’s success, it isn’t Biden’s executive orders. 

Were Comer to do some digging, he might find a president who didn’t know what he was signing. Unfortunately for Comer, that president is Trump. 

Trump openly admitted he either doesn’t know what he’s signing or is letting someone sign things in his name. Trump signed the proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove Venezuelan migrants in secret, but when asked by reporters about Judge James Boasberg’s criticism of that, Trump said, “I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” and that “other people handled it.” 

It’s not entirely clear if that was meant to be an admission or just a self-inflicted wound incurred when Trump threw Secretary of State Marco Rubio under the bus: “Marco Rubio’s done a great job. And he wanted them out, and we go along with that.”

Comer’s well-worn path is also being trod by Ed Martin. Martin was once Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., until it became clear that Martin was too unhinged even for Senate Republicans. Martin is now the pardons attorney at the Department of Justice. 

Right after getting his new gig, Martin said his top priority was to review Biden’s pardons. Unlike Comer, Martin doesn’t think Biden’s use of an autopen is the issue, but nonetheless told ABC News, “the Biden pardons need some scrutiny. I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did and if they’re, I don’t know, null and void, I’m not sure how that operates.”

One doesn’t need to be a failed U.S. attorney appointee to know that, as with judicial appointments, there is no mechanism to reverse a pardon. Martin knows this, and Comer does too. But pretending they don’t is red meat for the Trump base, and that’s what they really care about. 

Crazed Republicans can’t stop obsessing over Joe Biden’s health

House Republicans are ramping up their investigation into President Joe Biden’s health, targeting a new round of former aides with interview requests.

GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the House Oversight Committee, announced on Wednesday that he’s now seeking testimony from more top Biden officials, including former chief of staff Ron Klain and senior adviser Anita Dunn. Also on Comer’s list are longtime adviser Mike Donilon, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, and counselor Steve Ricchetti.

“The Committee requests your testimony to evaluate your eye-witness account of former President Biden’s decline,” Comer wrote in nearly identical letters, adding that the aides must agree to appear by June 11 or face a subpoena.

This latest batch of targets follows Comer’s round of demands last month, when he requested to question Biden’s personal physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, and White House staffers Anthony Bernal, Neera Tanden, Annie Tomasini, and Ashley Williams.

“These five former senior advisors were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said, claiming that they could shed light on who was really “calling the shots.”

It’s not clear what Comer expects to get out of this, but we won’t have to wait long to find out. 

On Tuesday, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that staff attorneys have already been in touch with the various aides’ legal teams and that he expects each official to testify voluntarily. Where that actually happens, and what the GOP even considers a “win” here, remains to be seen.

But even if this whole thing turns up nothing, Republicans will still have accomplished what they set out to do: keep the attacks on Biden coming. It’s all part of a larger GOP effort to undermine Biden’s legacy by painting him as unfit for office, even after leaving it. 

Ed Martin, pardon attorney for the Department of Justice 

Similarly, President Donald Trump’s pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, Ed Martin, is now digging into Biden’s end-of-term clemency decisions, including the mechanics of how they were approved.

Comer, who just wrapped up a failed 15-month impeachment probe, even floated the idea of having Biden testify before Congress over the use of an autopen. Despite MAGA’s breathless obsession, autopens are legal, and presidents have used them for years.

The GOP has seized on a string of stories to fuel its narrative: first, gossip that Biden’s team downplayed health concerns during his reelection bid, then the announcement of his metastatic prostate cancer diagnosis. Republicans immediately—and without evidence—accused his staff of orchestrating a cover-up.

While Biden’s health decline was evident during his chaotic final debate against Trump, there’s no public proof that others were running the show for him or that he couldn’t perform the core duties of the presidency. His allies have rejected that framing outright.

But those facts haven’t slowed the GOP down. According to CNN, the House Judiciary Committee is also preparing to interview David Weiss, the former Hunter Biden special counsel, behind closed doors this week. And Republicans have also been chasing two DOJ tax prosecutors involved in the Hunter Biden probe.

These moves are easier with a compliant House and White House, and the political benefits are obvious. The investigations feed their narrative, keep Biden in the headlines, and pull focus from GOP turmoil. Even Comer admits as much.

“It is a whole different environment,” he told CNN.

In other words, the hunt continues.

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Republicans won’t stop beating up on Biden because it’s all they have

President Donald Trump hasn’t even been back in office for 200 days, and already, his second term is a full-blown disaster.

He’s sort of breaking up with his tech billionaire co-President Elon Musk. His so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” pitched as the cornerstone of his legislative revival, is tearing the GOP apart. His power grabs are being dragged through the courts. And his tariff plan—if it survives—could drive up prices and tip the economy toward a recession.

With all that chaos on their plate, Republicans should be laser-focused on solving problems. Instead, they’re still obsessed with former President Joe Biden.

Two recent stories gave them just enough cover. First, a Beltway tell-all claimed Biden’s team downplayed his health issues when he launched his reelection bid. Then came news of his metastatic prostate cancer diagnosis—and Republicans immediately, and without evidence, cried “cover-up.” 

Rep. James Comer, after leading a failed 15-month impeachment investigation, even suggested that Biden should testify before Congress over his use of an autopen, as if that somehow proves cognitive decline. For the record: Autopens are legal. Presidents, including Barack Obama, have used them, despite MAGA’s ongoing paranoia.

To be clear, Republicans aren’t the only ones who raised questions about Biden’s mental and physical fitness. Democrats did too. So did the media. His age and decline weren’t hidden—they were headline news. Voters knew what they were signing up for.

And sure, it’s possible this issue could resurface in 2026 or 2028. But if it does, it won’t be because MAGA world kept doomposting about Biden’s brain scans; It’ll be because Democrats failed to give voters anything else to care about.

Let’s be real. The defining story of the next election won’t be Biden’s prostate. It’ll be Trump—his chaos, his legacy, and the wreckage he’s already leaving behind.

To name just a few lowlights: He’s nuked the economy with asinine tariffs. He’s gutted the federal workforce, undermining basic services like Social Security and weather forecasting. He’s threatened law firms to scare them away from challenging his illegal moves—or defending his political enemies. He’s openly ignoring court orders, plunging the country into a full-blown constitutional crisis.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Voters won’t forget. Republican lawmakers are already getting grilled by angry constituents at town halls. The idea that Biden’s medical chart will outweigh Trump’s reign of chaos is laughable.

But that’s the GOP’s bet because they need Biden in the narrative. They need a scapegoat, a boogeyman, a distraction. They can’t run on their record, so they run on fiction.

Just look at how Democrats have responded to the Biden book: no freakouts, no backstabbing. Most agree he shouldn’t have run again—but they aren’t re-litigating 2024 or knifing one another over 2028. That unity says more than any hot take. Republicans need Biden in the story. Democrats have already moved on.

Of course, in MAGA-land, Biden’s name will never die. His health, his staff, his supposed “cover-up”—all filed under the same deranged umbrella as Benghazi, birth certificates, George Soros, and Kamala Harris’ laugh. None of it’s real. It’s just Republican fan fiction. And when the headlines dry up, the fever swamp always circles back to its favorite fantasy villains.

Still, if swing voters are actually talking about Biden in 2028, Democrats will only have themselves to blame for failing to give the country something better to talk about.

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This House Republican just can’t quit investigating Joe Biden

The GOP’s obsession with former President Joe Biden shows no signs of letting up. After Rep. James Comer’s 15-month impeachment investigation during Biden’s presidency failed spectacularly, the chair of the House Oversight Committee has now latched on to a conspiracy theory pushed by fellow Biden stalker Donald Trump back in March.

“Some of these bureaucrats, these unnamed bureaucrats in the White House were using the autopen to sign Joe Biden's name on very important things like pardons and like executive orders,” Comer babbled to Fox News on Thursday.

Comer’s evidence includes “whistleblowers in the administration” and Jake Tapper’s new book, which claims the now-82-year-old Biden was significantly impaired during his final months in office.

“It raises a lot of questions as to, what was the decision process and who was forging,” Comer said. “Because if Joe Biden wasn't authorizing, someone was forging his name on some very important documents.” 

The foundation of this latest “investigation” is the same conspiracy theory Trump himself promoted when he claimed Biden was incapacitated while president because he used an autopen—a device presidents have used for decades to sign documents remotely. Less than 24 hours after pushing this theory, Trump himself admitted to using an autopen while in office. 

This is just the latest example of Trump and the GOP’s unending beef with Biden. Following the former president’s announcement of his Stage 4 prostate cancer diagnosis, House Republicans launched an investigation into the former president’s health while in office in a further attempt to beat that dead horse.

Republican lawmakers’ fixation on all things Joe mirrors their cult leader’s preoccupation with the man he lost to in 2020. Just last month, Trump even used the passing of former President Jimmy Carter as an opportunity to insult Biden.

Comer’s repeated failures to prove the existence of a shadowy Biden family crime syndicate only highlighted how the Kentucky congressman did the exact things he accused Biden of doing. Even after Biden dropped out of the race and Trump won the presidential election in November, Comer kept pushing his evidence-free investigation, telling Newsmax he wanted to continue it.

When it comes to being the target of a petty vendetta, it seems Biden’s greatest mistake was being the last president since Barack Obama to win more than 50% of the popular vote.

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House GOP to probe important things—like Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis

Because they are absolute ghouls, House Republicans are opening an investigation into former President Joe Biden’s health, including demanding that his doctor testify about Biden’s private medical information. Meanwhile, current President Donald Trump is so flagrantly and consistently incoherent that the only way for his administration to deal with it is to ensure no transcripts of his rambling remarks are available. 

This latest probe is technically more of a reopening. House Republicans investigated Biden’s alleged cognitive decline last year, but thanks to Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper making the rounds with their book about how Biden getting old is the biggest threat to American democracy, they’ve got an excuse to do it again. And of course, after Biden announced his prostate cancer diagnosis, the door was wide open for Rep. James Comer to continue his unhealthy vendetta against the Biden family.

Not that Comer really needs an excuse. The fever swamp that is his brain likely means that pretty much any time anyone even mentions the Biden name, he spins up the House Oversight Committee to “investigate” something, anything. After Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, Comer ran to Newsmax to say that meant it was time to open another investigation into Hunter’s laptop. That was after he spent 15 months fruitlessly trying to invent some corruption for which Biden could be impeached. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer

The one-two punch of Tapper’s media blitz and Biden’s cancer diagnosis must have been a dream come true for Comer, who dashed off letters to Biden’s doctors and former aides. He wants Biden’s doctor to prove that his “financial relationship with the Biden family” didn’t affect his assessment of Biden’s fitness to serve, while also basically saying that the doctor helped cover up Biden’s decline from the public. Inquiries to former aides are so that Comer can “understand who made key decisions and exercised the powers of the executive branch during the Biden Administration,” with the implication there being, of course, that it was not Joe Biden. 

Hilariously, Comer is pretending that one of the reasons Biden’s physician has to share the former president’s private medical information is that the Oversight Committee needs that to “explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents’ fitness to serve pursuant to its authority under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.” 

Comer has no actual interest in fitness to serve. This is just him building on Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric saying the 25th Amendment should be “modified” to allow for the removal of a vice president because Kamala Harris was part of a conspiracy to cover up Biden’s decline. Any real query into the capacity of a president to do his job would have to grapple with not just Trump’s inability to do the job but also his obvious handoff of vast chunks of decision-making.

Trump routinely makes things up out of thin air, but that’s always been the case. That makes it difficult to tell whether he’s lost the plot or is just lying. When he showed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pictures from the Democratic Republic of Congo and insisted they were instead evidence of white genocide in South Africa, it’s just as likely that Trump knew the truth but didn’t care as it is that he genuinely didn’t have any idea what he was looking at. 

Related | Trump's racist ambush of South African president gets even more bonkers

But even if you set aside all the times in which Trump blatantly lies in service of a political point, you’ve still got all the other times where it seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He told the press he didn’t sign the Alien Enemies Act proclamation that paved the way for the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants, despite his signature appearing on it. 

And he routinely admits he doesn’t know about major decisions. Earlier this month, The Washington Post compiled the most recent ones. He said he didn’t know his nominee for surgeon general, but had listened to a recommendation from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He said he hadn’t been briefed on U.S. soldiers killed in Lithuania. He wasn’t aware the administration was considering deporting people to Libya. He’s not the person responsible for the failure to bring Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia home from a Salvadoran prison, because, “We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

It’s a cliche to say that every accusation is a confession, but that’s pretty much what happens every time Republicans open their mouths. 

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As shutdown looms, fringe Republican won’t let go of punishing Democrat

To no one’s surprise, House Republicans can’t seem to get their priorities in line. 

While some far-right Republicans are directing their attention to further punishing Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas—who was ejected from the chamber after dissenting during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress—the GOP caucus should really turn its attention toward preventing a federal government shutdown.

But leave it to the House Freedom Caucus to be too bogged down with scheming ways to show their fealty to Trump to work on averting a shutdown, which could furlough thousands of federal workers.

Both chambers of Congress only have until midnight Friday to pass a funding bill, and House Republicans only released their 99-page measure to avert a shutdown this past Saturday. The bill, which would fund federal agencies through Sept. 30, would increase defense spending and cut non-defense discretionary spending.

House Speaker Mike Johnson will bring the bill to the floor for a vote this week, likely on Tuesday, but we don’t know whether it will pass. Trump is publicly pressuring Republicans into voting for it, but Democrats will likely oppose it. 

At least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already said he’d oppose the bill. And given the Republican’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, Johnson can’t afford to lose another GOP vote. Given this, one might think that Republicans would be working to whip up votes for the bill, but some of the more hardline caucus members have other priorities.

Rep. Al Green, Democrat of Texas, dissents during President Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.

According to Punchbowl News, Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a member of the far-right House Freedom Conference, authored a bogus resolution calling Green’s actions “a breach of decorum” and suggesting that he “be removed from his committee assignments.”

Removal from committee assignments is usually a punishment reserved for the worst of the worst. In 2021, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has a reputation for sharing baseless conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism, was stripped of her committee assignments after the discovery of her past statements endorsing the execution of Democrats, among other heinous things. 

Later that year, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who made appearances at white nationalist events, also lost his assignments after he shared a violent animated video depicting him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

In comparison, this form of punishment is often used as petty retribution against Democrats. For example, Rep. Eric Swalwell and then-Rep. Adam Schiff, both of California, were booted from the House Intelligence Committee in 2023 as punishment for voting to eject Greene and Gosar from their committees and for their roles in the impeachment of Trump.

Green’s worst offense is waving his cane in the air and declaring that Trump had “no mandate” to cut Medicaid, which he and other Republicans are pursuing to help pay for tax cuts for the rich. 

That’s not much different—or worse—than what happened in 2022 when Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado relentlessly heckled former President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address. 

While Republicans certainly have a reputation for pettiness, there’s a sense that this new measure against Green won’t go anywhere. Johnson, for his part, reportedly thinks “that this measure should go away.”

That’s probably because he’s more focused on appeasing Trump and avoiding a shutdown. It’d be a bad look for Johnson, Trump, and the GOP at large if the government shut down less than two months into his second term.

The resolution against Green hasn’t formally been filed, but Republicans already feel like they won since they successfully censured him last week with the help of some traitorous Democrats.

In any sense, the move to further punish Green and pass a bill through the chamber at breakneck speed shows how far Republicans will go to ensure that Dear Leader gets what he wants. 

But if anything, these moves don’t signify the GOP’s fealty to Trump so much as how truly terrified they are of him.

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Biden to leave office less popular than Trump

Americans are giving President Joe Biden harsh reviews before he leaves office in less than two weeks, on Jan. 20. And worse than that, they appear to be judging him even more harshly than his two most recent predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama.

According to a survey released on Friday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just one-quarter of U.S. adults (25%) said that Biden was a “good” or “great” president, compared with Trump, whom 36% of U.S. adults gave the same ranking after his first term in office ended, in 2021. (Notably, though, Trump had slightly higher “poor” and “terrible” ratings than Biden.)

Even more remarkable is that the survey about Trump was conducted shortly after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And this is backed up by other polling as well. For instance, between Jan. 7-20, 2021, Trump’s approval ratings dropped from 42% to 39%, according to 538’s average. But at present, Biden’s job approval ratings sit at about 37%, according to 538’s average.

The result of this past November’s election, where Trump got very close to earning a majority of the popular vote, showed that voters preferred a return to Trump versus a continuation of Democratic rule, perhaps especially one tied to Biden. But now we have even more verification of the degree to which voters, after seeing both men govern, simply (if slightly) prefer Trump to Biden.

According to a national tracking poll by Civiqs, just 38% of registered voters have a favorable view of Biden. In fact, he has been below 40% since Nov. 10, making the odds of a rebound ahead of Trump’s inauguration pretty slim. Meanwhile, 45% of voters have a favorable view of Trump, according to Civiqs, and his favorability has been steadily increasing since about February 2023.

These data points starkly illustrate just how tarnished Biden’s legacy has become, despite an impressive domestic record. Not only did he pass landmark legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, to help combat climate change, but Trump is also inheriting a strong economy, for which he has Biden to thank.

The issue? Polling suggests voters either don’t know this or believe Biden was insufficient in other ways. The AP-NORC survey found that only 2 in 10 Americans (22%) think Biden made good on his campaign promises. A larger share, 38%, said that Biden did not keep his word. The remaining 39% said he tried but failed to keep his campaign promises.

Biden is also faring considerably worse than Obama was at the end of his presidency. AP-NORC found that Obama left his second term in office with a majority of Americans (52%) describing his tenure as “good” or “great.” This squares with data released earlier this week by Gallup, which found Biden’s standing is similar to that of former President Richard Nixon, who resigned amid the infamous Watergate scandal. (Unlike the AP-NORC survey, Gallup’s involved a retrospective assessment of past presidents, not a contemporaneous one.)

Former President Barack Obama

As other politicos have pointed out, Trump seems to be enjoying a honeymoon period since his win in November. It’s possible, of course, that four years of Biden caused the electorate to reassess Trump, who once had dismal approval and favorability ratings too.

Remarkably, though, Trump has retained relative popularity amid two impeachments, many federal indictments, two assassination attempts, and some of the most unrelentingly negative media coverage in modern history, among many other faults of his. Such a deep catalog of sins would leave most politicians unable to revive their careers, but somehow Trump did—and he’s unfortunately doing better than ever.

The good news for Biden, if there is any, is that Americans’ negative views toward him may change over time. After all, Gallup found that other presidents who left with low approval ratings—including George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter—saw Americans’ perception of their presidencies warm with time. 

Plus, knowing Trump, he’ll surely squander his goodwill with the American electorate in due time. Every honeymoon must come to an end, including Trump’s. And with the high number of unpopular campaign pledges he’s made, he’s likely to only accelerate that timeline.

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Fox News host’s description of Jan. 6 rioters will make your blood boil

Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy described the insurrectionists who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political dissidents” during a rant about federal law enforcement on Friday.

Campos-Duffy, who is perhaps best known for appearing on MTV’s “The Real World” in the 1990s, made her claim during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“We have an FBI, a DOD, and a Homeland Security that has given us zero confidence. They've said nothing with a border open and terrorists flowing over the borders. They've been directing agents to go after political dissidents from J6, from January 6, instead of going after terrorists,” Duffy said while commenting on the New Orleans attacker who was reported to be inspired by ISIS.

Campos-Duffy’s sympathetic description of the insurrections echoes that of Donald Trump, who has floated the idea of pardoning them and has referred to the armed attack as a “day of love.”

In reality, the attackers violently forced their way into the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from fulfilling one of its longest-running and most important functions: certifying the presidential election results.

At least seven people died as a result of the Jan. 6 attack, a direct contradiction to the casual language that Campos-Duffy used to describe the rioters. More than 1,200 people have been arrested and charged in connection with the insurrection, with some charges including sedition against the United States. In fact, Trump was also charged—and even impeached—for his role in inciting the attack.

Campos-Duffy’s underlying argument that the U.S. government fails to go after terrorists is also faulty. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. military executed a drone strike in 2022 that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, alongside Osama bin Laden, led the terrorist group Al Qaeda and assisted in the planning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The drone strike was a continuation of policy from Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama, who ordered the operation that successfully killed bin Laden in 2011.

Looks like the latest Fox News rant was just that—a rant.

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Former FBI informant to plead guilty to lying about the Bidens

A former FBI informant is set to plead guilty on Monday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Alexander Smirnov is expected to make the plea in Los Angeles to a felony charge in connection with the bogus story, along with a tax evasion charge stemming from a separate indictment accusing him of concealing millions of dollars of income, according to court papers.

Smirnov has been behind bars since his arrest in February on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015.

Prosecutors and the defense have agreed to recommend a sentence of between four and six years in prison, according to the plea agreement.

Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.

But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. An FBI field office investigated the allegations and recommended the case be closed in August 2020, according to charging documents.

No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes as president or in his previous office as vice president.

While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov's arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.

During a September 2023 conversation with investigators, Smirnov also claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in Ukraine’s capital where he had stayed was “wired” and under their control — information he said was passed along to him by four high-level Russian officials.

But Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov's indictment.

Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

The case against Smirnov was brought by special counsel David Weiss, who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to federal charges in the tax case. But he was pardoned this month by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”

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Biden has pardoned his son Hunter. What does that mean?

President Joe Biden had long pledged that he would not pardon his son, Hunter, who was set to be sentenced this month for gun and tax convictions. But on Sunday, the president did just that.

The sweeping pardon covers not only Hunter Biden's convictions in two cases in Delaware and California, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”

Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him. But it was still a surprising reversal.

What's a pardon, anyway?

The U.S. Constitution says that a president has the power to grant clemency, which includes both pardons and commutations. A pardon forgives federal criminal offenses; a commutation reduces penalties but isn't as sweeping. The power has its roots in English law—the king could grant mercy to anyone—and it made it over the ocean to the American colonies and stuck around. The U.S. Supreme Court has found the presidential pardon authority to be very broad. And presidents use the power a lot: Donald Trump granted 237 acts of clemency during his four years in office and Barack Obama granted clemency 1,927 times in his eight years. Presidents have forgiven drug offenses, fraud convictions and Vietnam-era draft dodgers, among many other things.

But a president can only grant pardons for federal offenses, not state ones. Impeachment convictions also aren't pardonable.

What are the crimes Hunter Biden was accused of committing?

Hunter Biden was convicted in June of lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018 and swore that he wasn’t a drug user. Just months later, he pleaded guilty to charges accusing him of a scheme to avoid paying at least $1.4 million in taxes. Prosecutors alleged he lived lavishly while flouting the tax law, spending his cash on things like strippers and luxury hotels—“in short, everything but his taxes.”

Hunter Biden steps into a vehicle as he leaves federal court on Sept. 5, 2024, in Los Angeles, after pleading guilty to federal tax charges.

Both cases stemmed from a period in Hunter Biden’s life in which he struggled with drug and alcohol abuse before becoming sober in 2019.

After the gun trial aired salacious and unflattering details about Hunter Biden’s life, the president’s son said he agreed to plead guilty to the tax charges to spare his family another embarrassing criminal trial.

The tax trial was also expected to showcase details about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which Republicans have seized on to try to paint the Biden family as corrupt.

Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two cases by judges in California and Delaware who were nominated to the bench by Trump.

Special counsel David Weiss’ office had not said whether prosecutors had planned to seek prison time. The tax charges carried up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges were punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible the younger Biden would have avoided prison time entirely.

Didn’t Biden say he wouldn’t pardon his son?

Yes. Hunter Biden has been under federal investigation since 2020. He reached a deal with federal prosecutors and was supposed to plead guilty last year to misdemeanor tax offenses and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long he stayed out of trouble for two years.

But the plea hearing quickly unraveled when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. He was subsequently indicted in the two cases, and he’s claimed that he was singled out because he is the president’s son.

The president told reporters earlier this summer that he would not pardon his son.

“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the brightest, most decent men I know,” he said. “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said as recently as Nov. 8 that Biden would not pardon his son.

President Joe Biden speaks on the South Lawn of the White House during a ceremony to commemorate World AIDS Day with survivors, their families and advocates, Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, in Washington.

Why did Biden change his mind?

In his statement Sunday, Biden said that his son had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” Biden has been concerned—as Hunter Biden was—about his political adversaries.

Also, the president is no longer running for office. He made his no-pardon pledge before he dropped out of the presidential race in June.

In his statement, the president said it was clear that his son was treated differently from other defendants in similar predicaments. The plea deal unraveled and Biden’s political opponents took credit for pressuring the process, he said.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter—who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me—and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Have other presidents pardoned their family members or friends?

Yes. In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner. He also pardoned multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump over the weekend announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. envoy to France in his next administration.

President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton in 2001, after he had completed a prison term for drug charges. Clinton also pardoned his former business partner Susan McDougal, who had been sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the Whitewater real estate deal.

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