When congressional investigators sat down with Devon Archer, a former Hunter Biden business associate, in August, Republicans had high hopes. They shouldn’t have gotten their hopes up: Archer said under oath that Joe Biden wasn’t involved with Burisma, didn’t talk business with his son’s associates, and didn’t take bribes.
But immediately after the closed-door testimony, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer painted a very different picture. In fact, the Kentucky Republican peddled a variety of highly provocative claims about Archer’s testimony — including during appearances on national television — leading the public to believe the witness advanced the case against the president.
When the official transcript came to public light, reality showed the opposite of what Comer had claimed.
Last week, the controversial GOP committee chairman faced the same allegations in reference to a different witness. NBC News reported:
An attorney for Kevin Morris, a lawyer for Hunter Biden who loaned him millions of dollars to pay his tax bills, is accusing Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., of mischaracterizing testimony Morris made in a closed-door committee hearing Thursday.
In a letter to Comer, a copy of which I’ve obtained, Morris’ attorney wrote, “Not two hours after we left Mr. Morris’ transcribed interview, you issued a press statement with cherry‐picked, out of context and totally misleading descriptions of what Mr. Morris said. So much for the promise of your staff that Mr. Morris would be treated fairly.”
The same correspondence demanded that the Oversight Committee release the full transcript of the Q&A with Morris.
White House spokesperson Ian Sams responded soon after that Comer appears to have been caught “blatantly lying,” adding, “This has happened over and over and over.”
To be sure, the relevant transcript has not yet reached the public, and the chairman’s office told reporters on Friday that his claims will eventually be corroborated. That’s certainly possible, though it would be a dramatic break with the recent past.
As a Washington Post analysis explained last week, “Over and over and over and over and over, committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has made debunked and unsubstantiated public statements that cast the president and/or his son as dishonest or has rushed to release unsubstantiated claims or information that similarly collapse under scrutiny.” Others have noticed the same problem. Axios reported in September that Comer “has repeatedly exaggerated and distorted the findings of his investigation into the Biden family.” The report added that the Republican has “at times undermined his credibility” by “overstating his committee’s findings.” Now, another witness’ counsel has again accused Comer of misrepresenting closed-door testimony. It comes against a backdrop of the Kentucky Republican making promises he couldn’t keep, holding hearings that undermined his own partisan efforts, releasing ostensible “evidence” filled with factual errors, drawing the ire of his own GOP colleagues, and failing spectacularly to find any credible evidence against his intended target. But perhaps most important of all is appreciating Comer’s motivations. The more the Oversight Committee chairman plays fast and loose with the truth, the more we’re reminded that his impeachment crusade has failed to such an extent that he feels it’s necessary to play fast and loose with the truth.
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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