Trump Had Demanded Biden Be Impeached By Now
Maybe the GOP should have considered appointing an attorney to head the Oversight Committee instead of a farmer. Ranking member Jamie Raskin has been outwitting, outclassing, outmatching, outplaying, outshining and running circles around poor Comer every single time the two of them clash. It isn’t entirely Comer’s fault. The Democrats had the foresight to give the assignment to the most brilliant lawyer in the House, a celebrated constitutional scholar. I’d bet that Comer would milk a cow or shuck an ear of corn more effectively than Raskin.
Yesterday, Stephen Neukam reported that “House Republicans are increasingly disenchanted with Comer, saying his leadership of the Biden impeachment inquiry has become a ‘clueless investigation’ at best and— at worst— ‘a disaster.’ Less than 10 months away from the 2024 election, his impeachment investigation is barreling toward its conclusion, with no smoking gun to bring the president to his knees. Only one thing is clear: Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has lost the trust of some in his own party. ‘One would be hard pressed to find the best moment for James Comer in the Oversight Committee,’ one House Republican lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain internal relationships, told The Messenger. ‘It’s been a parade of embarrassments.’”
There was never any smoking gun for Comer and his committee to find. The person behind all the bad-mouthing is Marjorie Traitor Greene, who would like the chair of the committee for herself.
Republican sources have a problem with what the investigation has not accomplished. The probe has taken a winding road, jetting off into different paths of inquiry, some more obscure than others, from chasing claims of foreign bribery and influence peddling to probing the sale of Hunter Biden’s artwork and loans between the president and his brother. Republicans at the highest level of the party criticize the chairman's unfocused investigation.
“Comer has cast a wide net and caught very little fish. That is a big problem for him,” one personal ally of former President Donald Trump told The Messenger.
That’s not to say Republicans don’t see a basis for the investigation. With the thousands of financial documents Comer's panel has found and testimony of key witnesses, the probe has produced viable lanes of inquiry, GOP sources say, including claims of Biden family influence peddling and that Biden, as vice president, was allegedly implicated in a bribery scheme in Ukraine.
But they now fear Comer's mismanagement of the inquiry has ruined the GOP party's opportunity to score a much-ballyhooed election-year victory of impeaching the president, one source close to House GOP leadership said.
“James Comer continues to embarrass himself and House Republicans. He screws up over and over and over,” the source said. “I don’t know how Republicans actually impeach the president based on his clueless investigation and lack of leadership.”
One of the “embarrassments” that a number of sources pointed to was Comer’s latest back and forth with Hunter Biden, who over the past year has increasingly become a focus of the impeachment investigation. Republicans earlier this month were on the verge of holding the president’s son in contempt of Congress for skipping out on a deposition in the probe late last year.
When the Oversight Committee met two weeks ago to debate the contempt resolution, Hunter Biden pulled a show-stopping stunt by appearing in person in the hearing room, turning the proceedings into a circus of vulgarities, with one Republican lawmaker shouting that the first son has “no balls.”
“It seems like they got played by Hunter Biden,” one senior House GOP aide said. “It was a disaster. They looked like buffoons.”
Republicans also have grown tired of Comer’s frequent TV hits on conservative networks like Fox News and Newsmax in which they say he promises bombshell information, but then fails to produce impeachable evidence to meet the bar he himself has set too high.
One Republican pointed to the Oversight panel’s first impeachment hearing in September, which Comer said would be a venue for the committee to lay out its findings to date. But the hearing was widely panned as a disaster, with Jonathan Turley, one of the GOP’s star witnesses at the hearing, admitting there was not yet enough evidence to impeach the president.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who has become a darling of the online left for outfoxing Comer, said Republicans privately aired their grievances to him about the committee's latest hearing. [Note: Moskowitz is a right of center Democrat and is detested by “the left.”]
“Republicans believe the Oversight Committee has been a complete failure in all these theatrical hearings that never deliver on their promise,” said Moskowitz. “After the last hearing, even Republican members that serve on that committee with me told me that was a complete debacle for them.”
“This is why we shouldn't pick our chairman based on how much money they raise,” another member told Moskowitz, according to the congressman.
Twice-impeached Trump himself threatened House Republicans in August to impeach Biden "or fade into OBLIVION."
The source close to Trump also said Comer “set the bar too high” for an impeachable offense, attempting to prove a direct payment to Joe Biden in the probe. The investigation spent weeks rolling out payments to Joe Biden from Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s son and brother, which the White House and Biden allies brushed off as loan repayments. Proving a direct payment to the president, the source said, was not necessary.
“He has been one to essentially say things like we need to find all these transfers to Joe Biden and that’s what an impeachable offense is,” the Trump ally said. “He has set the bar too high when it shouldn’t be set that high for impeachment. Congress determines what is a high crime and misdemeanor.”
Over half a dozen Republicans have let MAGA Mike know that if he allows Trump to bully him into appointing Traitor Greene chair, they would quit the committee, including senior member Mike Turner (R-OH), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), William Timmons (R-SC) and Nick Langworthy (R-NY). One committee Democrat suggested the Republicans could do even worse than Comer. “They could make Alina Habba chief counsel. I just read she told the judge that she had Covid to get the E. Jean Carroll trial shut down and was then seen partying at Trump’s New Hampshire headquarters a few hours later. I can’t wait to see how the judge handles that.”
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