(On a personal note, I will appear at the Bartow (FL) Writers Block and Street Fair as a local author this Saturday May 20th from 10AM to 6PM. It's a fund-raising effort for the local church charities, and it'll be pet-friendly event with a ton of activities. I do hope to see some people there, and buy my books!)
(Update: Again, many thanks to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for adding this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up!)
One of the things expected from the US House Republicans this congressional cycle was a persistent wave of mudslinging "investigations" into conspiracy-driven wingnut allegations aimed at Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and the Democratic Party as a whole.
Not because there was any well-known dirt or questionable conduct by Biden himself, but because the Republicans needed to demean him, ruin his public persona, and make it harder for Biden to run for re-election in 2024.
Look at the trend of Republican dirt-digging over the decades. The Far Right had Whitewater (and then Vince Foster's suicide) to harass Bill Clinton in the 1990s, they had BS on Obama's birth certificate in the 2010s that went nowhere, and then a Solyandra scandal that went nowhere, and then Benghazi to undermine Hillary Clinton for her 2016 run, and then Hillary's emails and private server that all turned into nothingburgers but arguably succeeded in throwing that election cycle to trump.
This time around, the House Oversight and other special committees were going after Joe for his son Hunter's possibly corrupt work with Ukrainian businesses. Which is, to be fair, leading up to a handful of misdemeanor charges and one felony tax dodge charge sometime soon. Frustratingly for the House GOP, they couldn't dig up any evidence Hunter's father ran interference for him.
In the aftermath of that failed press conference, the chair of the Oversight Committee James Comer went public with the admission that they couldn't get any whistleblowers in the federal agencies to step forward, and that his committee lost track of "a key witness" that would have tied the whole room together uh tied Hunter's corruption to Papa Joe's decades of Senate and Vice Presidential work.
The public mockery for Comer's mishandling of witnesses came quick (via Igor Derysh at Salon):
Fox News host Maria Bartiromo pressed Comer on the evidence on Sunday.
"You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information," she said. "Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?"
"Well, unfortunately, we can't track down the informant," Comer replied. "We're hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible."
The "Girlfriend From Canada" excuse and "The Dog Ate My Homework" excuse can only take you so far, bro.
Comer added that "no president has ever been accused of the things that the Biden family's been accused of."
Bro. I'm pretty fucking sure the trump family has been accused of more serious shitload of corrupt things during their years in the White House than Joe's.
"Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?" Bartiromo interjected.
"Well, we're hopeful that we can find the informant," Comer said. "Remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don't make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that."
Comer added that nine of the 10 informants "that we've identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens, they're one of three things. They're either currently in court, they're currently in jail, or they're currently missing..."
"It is stunning that some people are missing, that you need to the prove this," (Bartiromo) said. "Just stunning. A stunning breaking news story this morning that some of these people now may be missing," she later added as she wrapped up the interview.
Granted, until it's time to present this all in a courtroom, you don't want to leak the identities of people who are honestly exposing criminal misdeeds at the risk of their own lives. But Comer isn't exactly credible himself talking about "credible" people we have no idea who they are. For all we do know, Comer's "witnesses" are Far Right conspiracy buffs with no access to Biden's inner circles or even any ties to federal agencies under Biden's administration (then or now).
But if we're taking Comer's work seriously, then what Comer's admitting to is a terrible breach of investigatory procedures. One of the first things you gotta do when you're pulling witnesses together is that you gotta talk to them face-to-face as soon as possible, get their statements on record, verify the source(s), confirm they're in a position to know, etc. What Comer's admitting during that interview is that they didn't even have a handle on the informant to confirm the whistleblower was even real.
The House Republicans were charging ahead without having any evidence or witness to guide them. It's that whole "cart before the horse" and/or "get your damn ducks in a row" idiom (or metaphor, I'm not sure which) in real life.
I've represented #whistleblowers, especially within Intelligence Community (spies), for more than 25 years. Strange, I've never lost one.
— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) May 14, 2023
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At best, this was sloppy and incompetent. At worst, the House Republicans honestly didn't care if they had a witness/whistleblower at all. All they really wanted was the illusion that they had dirt on Biden.
Consider the other thing Comer said in that interview: Most of their informants were themselves facing criminal charges or currently in jail (as well as missing). We're talking about witnesses who won't exactly have honorable intentions to spill dirt or be considered reliable. But again, the facts were NOT at issue here. All Comer and the House GOP wanted were Big Lies about Biden to make Biden and the Dems look crooked, even if the facts proved otherwise.
When the House witch hunts inquiries into Joe Biden began, the Republican leadership all promised that they would have a number of key witnesses and whistleblowers to expose the fraud and danger of a Biden Presidency. They pretty much sent invites to every disgruntled federal employee from the FBI on down to the custodians at the American History museums to approach them with any scandalous whisper they could share. And yet, by all signs of things nobody did.
Consider this the Underpants Gnomes Congressional Inquiry. All they had going in for Step One was "Find incriminating dirt on Biden," and what they hoped for at Step Three was "PROFIT." They had nothing for Step Two.
For all the hopes and fantasies and conspiracy-mongering among the Republican faithful, there doesn't even look to be any large-scale corruption going on among the hated Democratic ranks. Whistleblowers and informants aren't stepping up because they're afraid to (compare to the numerous informants that cropped up during trump's misrule), there just aren't any real informants out there when it comes to Democratic governance.
Until Comer or Jim Jordan or Kevin McCarthy or anyone else among the House Republicans can present even one sliver of evidence of corruption, we shouldn't be taken in by their unfounded allegations about misconduct under Biden's leadership.
All the Republicans have anymore are the lies they keep telling themselves, even more than the lies they try to tell us.
It'd be funny and even pitiful, if it weren't so dangerous for the nation.
2 comments:
They have to have evidence of Biden's wrongdoing to uphold their "they all do it" excuse for Fergus' behavior. A local variation of the "both sides do it" lie that the goddamn mainstream media has as a business model.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Maybe a democrat could have some message control and say "bearing false witness" everytime Comer et al are mentioned ? Or everytime on TV.
INaw, blame the media,, because it's easier than demanding that our reps work the media.
The media has been the problem for over 20 years. That the Democrats haven't been able to respond to that obvious fact shows tthey are incompetent and need to be replaced by better (younger) Democrats.
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