In July, after weeks of hype from Comer about “bombshell testimony”, a business associate of Hunter Biden named Devon Archer appeared before the House oversight committee. But Comer later admitted, “We don’t know if they are legit or not,” during a Newsmax interview just five days later. Giuliani has said during several Newsmax TV appearances that he alerted the justice department to the allegation.”Īlso in June, Comer and Grassley began touting potential audio tapes supposedly proving that Biden accepted a $5m bribe from a Ukrainian energy company during the Barack Obama administration. Rudy Giuliani himself has taken credit for first raising the allegations. The report points out: “The only problem with Comer’s vehement statements? They are not true. In June, during a series of interviews with rightwing media, Comer claimed that the supposed bribery allegations against Biden have nothing to do with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor turned lawyer for ex-president Donald Trump. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images Joe Biden and his son Hunter have been accused of corruption by Republicans, but a report says there is not much in way of proof. And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is that – there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.” You don’t actually have any facts to that point. Host Steve Doocy challenged Comer: “That’s just your suggestion. “Worse still,” says the Congressional Integrity Project’s report, “the owner of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma had already rebutted the uncorroborated bribery allegations back in 2019.”Īlso in May, Comer published a bank memo attacking Biden for his alleged foreign business ties but even the conservative Fox News network was unimpressed. In early May, Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley, investigating Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, published an open letter to the FBI announcing subpoenas for an unclassified document supposedly describing an alleged “criminal scheme involving then-Vice-President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions”.īut when Comer and Grassley obtained the document, form FD-1023, and publicly released a redacted version – against the advice of intelligence officials who feared it would “unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source” – it turned out to be an uncorroborated FBI tip. Democrat Jamie Raskin wrote to him: “The two individuals your staff specifically identified as the individuals they understood to have been referenced during your March 6 Fox News interview, are not whistleblowers … Your repeated statements about ‘four people’ suggest that either you have intentionally misrepresented the Committee’s investigative progress to your conservative audience or that key investigative steps have been deliberately withheld from Committee Democrats.” It adds: “Problem is – they weren’t whistleblowers and there were only two people.”Ĭomer was eventually factchecked by his own colleague on the House oversight committee. ![]() ![]() They include Comer saying at his first press conference that he had evidence of “federal crimes committed”, relentlessly invoking “deep state” conspiracy theories and claiming that his whistleblowers “fear for their lives”.įor months, the report says, Comer talked to the media about four individuals he claimed were “whistleblowers”, a term increasingly hijacked by the right. The report offers an anatomy of a fake scandal, detailing a series of exaggerated assertions that have shriveled under scrutiny. “In fact, Republicans have been forced to walk back claim after claim.” “After months of political stunts, dozens of hearings, transcribed interviews, and memos, and despite hours on Fox peddling conspiracy theories, Comer and his Maga crew have failed to find a single shred of evidence linking President Biden to any of their lurid accusations,” says the report by the Congressional Integrity Project, which monitors the Republican investigations. But establishing the link between father and son has proved an elusive holy grail. A CNN/SSRS poll this week found that 61% of Americans believe that Biden did play such a role, including 42% who think he acted illegally. ![]() Some are threatening to force a government shutdown unless an impeachment inquiry is opened despite objections from wary Republican colleagues in the Senate.Ĭomer has been leading an aggressive investigation into unsubstantiated claims that Biden was involved in his son Hunter’s foreign business affairs during his time as vice-president. ![]() The lack of a case underlines the huge political risks facing House Republicans when they return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
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