Joe Biden – The Head of a Crime Family? For several months, the House Republicans have been investigating President Biden and accusing him of being part of a “crime family.” But what they haven’t done is uncover proof of any crime by the president, as a scathing new report points out.
Has the GOP Gone Too Far?
For most of 2023, the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee and other committees have been investigating the finances of President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and others. They have regularly released what they consider damning things from the financial records or email accounts of Hunter Biden and others, and have repeatedly tried to put across a narrative about a “Biden crime family.”
Later this month, those Republicans are expected to bring all of this together into an impeachment inquiry against the president. But what they have not done is establish any proof that the president himself has accepted any improper money, that he did anything as president or vice president to help his son’s business partners, or that the president committed any crime at all.
Now, a new report lays out what it calls the “failure” of all of those investigatory efforts.
The Congressional Integrity Project, which is a liberal organization dedicated to “exposing the reality behind Republicans’ politically motivated oversight and investigations targeting President Biden and Democrats,” released a report this week called “James Comer’s 8 Months of Abject Failure,” in reference to the Republican House Oversight chairman.
The report, an introductory press release said, “highlights the total and complete lack of evidence that James Comer has uncovered in the past eight months of congressional investigations.”
The report itself goes point-by-point through various claims the House GOP has made over the course of the year and argues that the evidence falls short of the claims being made.
It touches on claims that the president and his son accepted bribes, which are sourced to a Justice Department memo that is not backed by solid evidence.
“When Comer and [Sen. Charles] Grassley obtained the document, form FD-1023, and publicly released a redacted version in July – against the advice of intelligence officials who feared it would “unnecessarily risk the safety of a confidential source,” the reports says, “it ended up being an uncorroborated FBI tip. Worse still, the owner of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, had already rebutted the uncorroborated bribery allegations back in 2019: ‘As part of the impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump, Congress learned that Mr. Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch and the owner of Burisma, whom Republican Committee Members appear to have identified as the source of the allegations memorialized in the Form FD-1023, squarely rebutted these allegations in 2019.’”
“As Kevin McCarthy seems ready and willing to bow to Donald Trump and extremist MAGA members like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene by moving forward with impeachment based on Jamie Comer’s investigation, it’s important to recognize that the only thing Comer has proved so far is that he is not capable of conducting legitimate oversight and should not be trusted to lead this important committee,” Kyle Herrig, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
“The past eight months have been a complete and total failure, with Comer wasting all of his committee’s time on a series of political stunts that have failed to uncover a shred of evidence of wrongdoing against President Biden.”
A statement to The Hill by the Oversight and Accountability Committee blamed “dark money leftist groups” for the new report.
NBC News had reported earlier in the day on preparations for Joe Biden’s defense against impeachment by Democrats on the Oversight Committee, led by its ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
“The Constitution says that the standard for impeachment is treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. They don’t have anything like that,” Raskin said in a recent meeting, as reported by NBC News. “The impetus here, of course, is just to do the political bidding of Donald Trump.”
Raskin has issued a 14-page memo rebutting claims Republicans have been making about the president, but it’s not clear if that is tied in any way to the Congressional Integrity Project’s own report (which is only seven pages.)
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
