American history is filled with examples of ridiculous congressional investigations, but the House GOP’s crusade against President Joe Biden is certainly among the most cringeworthy. Even plenty of Republicans have admitted as much.
Following months of humiliating failures, Politico reported in the spring that behind the scenes, GOP officials were quietly admitting that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s impeachment crusade had been “hobbled by embarrassing setbacks.” Punchbowl News, meanwhile, quoted a House Republican leadership aide who said Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan were “becoming the chairmen who cried wolf.”
The more they tried to get their investigation back on track, the more embarrassing their investigation became.
It now appears the entire effort has run its course and come to an ignominious end. NBC News reported:
The Republican-led House committees investigating whether to impeach President Joe Biden released their long-awaited report about their findings Monday morning, arguing that Biden has committed impeachable conduct but deferring to the full House on whether to pursue a formal impeachment.
The full, 291-page document is available online, but by any fair measure, it lands with a thud: The House Republicans’ report breaks no new ground and presents no credible evidence of wrongdoing. What’s more, Comer, Jordan, et al. released the findings while members are still on vacation and Capitol Hill is quiet, probably in the hopes of embarrassing the incumbent president ahead of his appearance at the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.
Of course, in order to actually embarrass Biden, the report would have to include damaging information. This one does not.
Making matters worse, it has no doubt occurred to the far-right committee chairmen that they’ve failed on multiple levels: House Republicans spent a year and a half desperately searching for evidence of crimes that were never committed, in the hopes of undermining a Democratic incumbent’s re-election plans that were ultimately put aside. In other words, GOP lawmakers failed to make a compelling case against a candidate who’s retiring anyway. So, what happens now? In theory, the impeachment report will be referred to House Republican leaders who will decide whether to hold an impeachment vote against the president. In practice, GOP leaders know they don’t have the votes to impeach the president without credible evidence of wrongdoing, so this entire misguided ordeal will likely fade into oblivion. As for Comer’s reputation, it appears unlikely to recover. The Kentuckian’s fellow Republicans have used words like “clueless” and “embarrassing” to describe his anti-Biden investigation, and the scope and scale of his fiasco won’t soon be forgotten.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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