It was on Monday when the House Oversight Committee sat down with a man named Devon Archer, whose name is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, but whom Republicans were very excited about. Archer was a former Hunter Biden business associate, which meant his congressional testimony created an exciting new opportunity for GOP crusaders.
It was a day later when special counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump for alleged crimes the former president committed after his 2020 defeat, as the Republican tried to overturn election results and seize illegitimate power.
For some Republicans, the fact that these two unrelated events unfolded in back-to-back days was evidence of … something. House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, for example, issued a written statement emphasizing the timeline and arguing, “Today’s sham indictment of Donald Trump is yet another desperate attempt to distract attention away from the mounting evidence of Joe Biden’s direct involvement in his family’s illegal influence peddling scheme, one of the greatest political corruption scandals in history.”
The New York congresswoman’s rhetoric was bizarre for a variety of reasons, but at the heart of Stefanik’s argument was an unstated assumption: Archer’s testimony was a disaster for Democrats and a triumph for Republicans desperate to tear President Joe Biden down. Of course the latest Trump indictment came on the heels of Archer’s testimony, the argument went, those rascally Democrats and their allies are terrified of the public learning what the witness had to say. It’s all one big “distraction.”
This turns reality on its head. Democrats don’t want to hide Archer’s testimony, they want to brag about it.
In fact, now that the public has access to a transcript of what exactly the witness said, a Washington Post analysis highlighted claims about Archer’s testimony from two powerful Republicans — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan — and made clear that both men said things that were plainly untrue.
On Thursday, the Oversight Committee released a transcript of Archer’s testimony — testimony for which Comer wasn’t present. What Archer said not only doesn’t comport with the presentations made by Comer and Jordan on television (which were obviously wrong from the outset), his testimony undermines the idea that Burisma wanted Shokin fired, that Zlochevsky paid any bribe — and, crucially, that Joe Biden was involved in any of this.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but this transcript is an obvious disaster for the Republicans. Not only did Archer discredit the GOP’s core claims, the transcript also leaves little doubt that when Republican lawmakers tried to put a positive spin on the witness’ testimony, they participated in a highly deceptive campaign.
To be sure, much of this probably isn’t too surprising. Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman issued a brief statement after Monday’s closed-door Q&A, explaining that he was the only member of the Oversight panel who stayed for the entire multi-hour hearing. He came away with some straightforward observations: According to the Republicans’ own witness, Joe Biden never talked business with his son or his son’s associates; the president was not party to any of his son’s business deals; and there was no bribe. But some might’ve been skeptical about Goldman’s assessment. Maybe, White House critics thought, the official transcript would be more damaging that the New York Democrat indicated. Now we know for sure: 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. The Post’s analysis added, “That’s the pattern here. Comer and Jordan and others hype claims of Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s work only to see those claims collapse as more information is made public.” Or put another way, Archer’s testimony was an embarrassing dud for Republicans; it did nothing to advance their partisan efforts against the president; and it was the latest in a series of related duds. If Comer and Jordan aren’t prepared to acknowledge that some of their rhetoric this week wasn’t true, they should at least consider a new hobby.
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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