As Donald Trump’s presidency reaches the 150-day mark, the list of scandals, abuses, missteps, failures and outrages is not short. Given Congress’ oversight responsibilities, there’s an overwhelming number of questions for lawmakers to ask about recent developments at the White House.
The good news, after five months of indifference, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee finally agreed to hold their first oversight hearing, exploring a White House controversy. The bad news is, GOP senators focused their attention on the wrong White House. Roll Call reported:
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee used a hearing Wednesday to air questions about the use of the autopen in the Biden administration, a topic the Trump administration has pursued this month. Conservative lawmakers at the hearing, entitled ‘Unfit to Serve: How the Biden Cover-Up Endangered America and Undermined the Constitution,’ slammed what they saw as an effort to hide former president Joe Biden’s mental capacity from the public, casting doubt on the extent he was in charge.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. Earlier this month, Trump broke new ground, directing the Justice Department to launch a wide-ranging investigation into Biden and officials in the Democrat’s administration, based on Republican conspiracy theories about the former president’s mental health. It was an unprecedented move: An incumbent American president had never before publicly ordered a federal probe of his predecessor.
Soon after, Trump publicly conceded that he didn’t have any evidence to warrant a DOJ investigation, but he liked the idea of having his attorney general investigate the former president anyway.
Two weeks later, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee followed the White House’s lead, holding a hearing — I’m using the word “hearing” loosely — that kicked around a variety of anti-Biden allegations. As part of the proceedings, the panel invited three witnesses to testify: John Harrison, a conservative law professor and former Justice Department official from the Bush/Quayle administration; Theodore Wold, a former administration official and former Heritage Foundation fellow; and Sean Spicer, Trump’s former White House press secretary.
Who better to offer expertise on Biden than three conservatives who never worked for Biden?
As NBC News reported, Senate Democrats largely boycotted the proceedings, though two Democratic members — Illinois’ Dick Durbin and Vermont’s Peter Welch — briefly attended and made statements before leaving.
As for why the hearing was organized in the first place, it’s possible this was part of a GOP effort to manufacture a scandal, just as it’s equally possible that Senate Republicans were eager to align themselves with Trump’s crusade against his immediate predecessor.
But Welch made a comment to NBC News that stood out for me: “I think there’s a re-election involving a certain senator who is calling the hearing versus political theory, political stuff.” The Vermonter didn’t identify the senator by name, but in context, there was no great mystery: Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who spent much of the hearing claiming there was “a conspiracy,” was chiefly responsible for organizing the partisan spectacle. Cornyn is also facing a difficult primary challenge ahead of his re-election bid next year, and he appears eager to score some points with his party’s far-right base. This was the first such hearing of the year in the Senate, though there’s a parallel effort in the lower chamber: House Republicans are ramping up their investigations into the former president, and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer recently subpoenaed Biden’s personal doctor to testify before Congress. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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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