The House Oversight Committee’s Republican members have issued a new report hitting on old themes, namely, that President Joe Biden and his family are/were involved in corrupt business dealings abroad. The report has drawn criticism (this article included). Some critics have called the report a “political hatchet job that offers no proof that Biden was involved.”
“The committee, led by Chairman James Comer, said in the report that it plans to continue to investigate Biden to find evidence of corruption, even as it acknowledged that it had no evidence that he financially benefited from the myriad foreign business dealings of his son Hunter,” USA Today reported.
Here’s what Comer had to say about the new report (which was titled ‘Third Bank Records Memorandum from the Oversight Committee’s Investigation into the Biden Family’s Influence Peddling and Business Schemes”). “During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine,” Comer said. “It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered.”
Joe Biden and Hunter Biden In the Clear?
Comer and the rest of the Oversight Committee have been promising Joe Biden’s ruin for eight months now. And still: nothing. No hard evidence of wrongdoing. The Devon Archer testimony was supposed to be the big reveal – and that, too, turned out to be a dud; the most significant tidbit Archer had to offer was that sometimes Hunter would put his dad on speakerphone and let the other person on the line know that Joe Biden was in on the call. Okay? Is that all you’ve got? After a several months investigation that I, as a taxpayer, have funded? That’s not gonna cut it.
Some critics are suggesting that the new report (paired with Comer’s latest statement) marks “a clear shift in strategy by the committee from one claiming it had the goods implicating Biden in corrupt schemes while he was vice president to one in which it says the lack of any such evidence must mean that he was involved,” USA Today reported.
Convenient.
Comer’s problem at this point is that he’s come too far. He can’t pack up and say ‘hey, I made a mistake, forget the whole thing, the Biden’s are clean.’ That’s not a tenable position. He’s been promising blood and his constituents are expecting blood. Any other end result would make Comer look either incompetent or dishonest. He’s better off forging ahead with his current scheme.
And I’m not saying that Comer is wrong about the Bidens necessarily. I’m receptive to the premise that the Bidens were behaving unethically. I’m receptive to the idea that Joe Biden put his thumb on the scale with respect to Hunter’s latest plea deal. But I don’t know what Hunter and Joe got up to behind the scenes in 2014 with Burisma et al. (I don’t know because no one seems to know (at least not anyone with the ability/willingness to disseminate the information). Meaning the possibility exists that Comer is correct about the Bidens.
But Comer hasn’t done a single thing to convince me that his accusations are veracious. And from my perspective, Comer is losing his credibility.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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