On Tuesday morning, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sat down with the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts to talk about his favorite subject: his obsessive-but-failed investigations into President Joe Biden. Fox News’ Steve Doocy, who’s noticed the Kentucky Republican’s inability to produce any meaningful evidence, asked the congressman what crime he thinks the president might’ve committed.
“Well, the crime is that, trading policy for money,” Comer replied. When Doocy asked the obvious follow-up question — what “policy” are we talking about — the committee chairman added, “Well, we’re gonna get into that.”
We are? That’s great news. I’ve been waiting all year for Comer and his cohorts to “get into that,” and it was reassuring to know that this is poised to happen.
Except, of course, it’s not. The Oversight Committee chairman released a new memo yesterday, and as Politico reported, it included as much evidence against the president as all of his earlier memos — which is to say, none.
In total Comer, according to the memo from his staff, has identified more than $20 million in payments from “foreign sources” writ large to Biden family members or their associates. But the memo, the third Comer has released so far this year, also doesn’t show a direct payment to Joe Biden.
Look, I’ve tried to keep an open mind about this. Sure, I’ve been skeptical about the endeavor, but I’ve made a good-faith effort to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Comer and his colleagues might uncover some shred of incriminating evidence that would warrant a serious explanation from the White House.
But these repeated Republican failures are just embarrassing. The fact that members of Biden’s family, and “associates” who know members of the president’s family, received money from foreign sources just isn’t that interesting. If it were the basis for a credible scandal, Congress would almost certainly have to investigate the enormous amount of money Donald Trump’s immediate relatives received from all kinds of “foreign sources.”
Meanwhile, the number of payments to the president himself still totals zero. “Committee Republicans have once again released information on financial transactions that do not involve the president,” Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the committee’s ranking member, said in a written statement.
Making matters worse, of course, this keeps happening. Indeed, as regular readers might recall, it was in May when Comer scheduled a highly anticipated press conference, at which the Kentucky Republican was supposed to unveil devastating information about Biden and the Democrat’s alleged corruption. It would be “judgment day” for the president, the committee chairman said, as GOP lawmakers unveiled evidence of a scandal that would make “Watergate look like jaywalking.”
A humiliating dud soon followed. After months of desperate searching and thorough investigating, Comer conceded that he still didn’t have any actual evidence against the incumbent president. More recently, Comer and his colleagues were equally excited about an interview with a Hunter Biden business associate. That was also a dud: Devon Archer actually ended up debunking all of the Republicans’ core allegations against the president. (Comer was caught soon after peddling brazenly false claims about Archer’s testimony while soliciting campaign contributions. The congressman also appears to have failed to tell the truth about being on the phone during the Archer Q&A.) If Comer believes he’s helping his party by keeping this pointless crusade alive, he’s mistaken. The chairman has now spent the better part of 2023 over-promising and under-delivering, ultimately persuading no one who wasn’t already inclined to believe evidence-free nonsense. He’s effectively throwing junk food at the base, but that won’t satisfy them for long. On the contrary, by getting Republicans’ hopes up, Comer has actually made matters worse: GOP officials and voters have been led to believe he’ll eventually deliver devastating proof of Biden’s imagined crimes. Except, Comer won’t — and can’t — do any such thing. The sooner he cuts his losses and acknowledges reality, the better.
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."
Latest Post
Recommended
