I swear, by all that’s holy, I’m so sick of writing about the Tompkinsville Twit that I could just spit.
But here we are, friends. Every time you conclude our boy, Rep. Jamie Comer (R-WhereverHeHangsHisHatIsHisHome) couldn’t possibly sink any lower, couldn’t demean himself any further, he ups and provides the American public with yet another outrage, the sort that easily establishes himself as frontrunner for the prestigious Dweeb of the Year award.
And well, he’s done it again.
Comer, who perennially seems to be auditioning for the part of Eb Dawson on a reboot of Green Acres, is, as we all know, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, where he hasn’t proved the least bit capable of exhibiting either oversight or accountability. What he’s obviously failed to do over these past 11 months, despite yeoman’s effort, is prove the slightest bit of any wrongdoing on the part of President Biden that could lead to his impeachment.
But, by golly, ol’ Jamie is still in there pitching, utilizing every underhanded tactic at his disposal, from lying to covering up mitigating information to issuing inflated claims, in his attempt to show that the president is not only on the take but heading up an extensive Biden Crime Family that is the scourge of the nation.
He hasn’t proven any of this, of course, but he desperately wants to oust the duly-elected president of these United States, apparently on his say-so alone.
Much of the hullabaloo involves Biden’s son Hunter, a lawyer and businessman who has done a lot of consulting work with overseas businesses, including some with connections to tyrannical governments in China, Russia, and even Ukraine.
Comer claims Hunter has engaged in influence peddling, using his father’s name to land lucrative posts with these apostate outfits, and that his old man is calling the shots, subverting policy to put more money in his offspring’s jeans and, by extension, his own.
(Two quick points before we stumble forward – there is no law prohibiting an individual, even the son of a president of the United States, from invoking his blood relationship to land a job. It furthermore isn’t unlawful for an American citizen to do business with a corporation tied to a foreign government, China or otherwise. That said, leave us proceed).
Jamie, after months of worthless investigation, took the step he considers his coup de grace. With great fanfare, replete with a video depicting him at an asinine signing ceremony, Comer issued a subpoena to Hunter Biden, requiring him to appear before the committee and answer questions.
Now, it seemed at the outset that Hunter was unlikely to accept Comer’s kind invitation, given that he has been charged with failure to pay as much as $1.5 million in federal taxes, a situation that might require him to take the Fifth Amendment. And then there is his problem regarding, well, let’s just define it as his questionable lifestyle choices in the past involving drugs and women.
A thanks but no response from Hunter would no doubt have pleased Comer. Hunter’s failure to comply would have dragged the already prolonged process ever closer to the 2924 election cycle, providing Jamie with an opportunity to employ the whole kit and kaboodle to further undermine the president, opening the door to another Donald J. Trump term in the White House. He could further accuse Hunter of being a scaredy-cat and that his refusal to testify could be considered a confession of guilt – although guilty of what has never been clear.
But then Hunter threw his own curveball and Jamie’s knees buckled. Through his Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, who has no problem making Comer look like a fool, Hunter agreed to testify at an open hearing of the committee, instead of at some star chamber escapade conducted behind closed doors out of the public eye.
The public hearing demand is understandable – Jamie has a bad habit of circulating information from non-public depositions that prop up his addled assessment of the president’s conduct while failing to produce information that knocks his case senseless.
For instance, Jamie cited a closed-door interview with Hunter’s former business partner, Devon Archer in July, in which he said Archer “confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son’s business dealings and was not involved.” But he failed to note, maybe he just forgot, that Archer further testified he was unaware of any wrongdoing on the president’s behalf, that he never witnessed the Bidens discussing Hunter’s business, and that he’s not aware that any foreign policy was changed to Hunter’s financial benefit.
“We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public,” Lowell wrote in a letter to Comer. “We therefore propose opening the door.”
Given the opportunity to confidently finalize his case against the president with his son’s testimony in front of God and everybody, Jamie wilted.
No public testimony. Only behind closed doors, where Comer won’t be immediately embarrassed.
Comer initially said he won’t permit Hunter to “play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else.”
But Jamie forgot a little something. Back in late October, in an interview with some dude named Benny Johnson on a You Tube show, Comer announced that anyone subpoenaed by his committee could opt for a public hearing.
“We’re in the downhill phase of this investigation now because we have so many documents and we can bring these people in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose, and we can ask these questions with evidence,” Comer said.
Ahem.
He then went on to say he didn’t want to give certain Democratic committee members, like Rep, Jamie Raskin, the ranking member from Maryland, aka The Smart Jamie, to raise hell during the hearing, saying they “can’t conduct themselves in a mature, credible manner.”
This from a nitwit who screamed a barnyard epithet a couple of times at a recent hearing and told a fellow lawmaker “you look like a Smurf here.”
Even a two-year-old can match that level of maturity.
In other words, Jamie doesn’t want to provide committee Democrats with an opportunity to take Comer’s words out of Hunter Biden’s mouth.
Comer is also making a big deal out of requiring Hunter to comply with a “lawfully issued subpoena.” He said it with a straight face – Comer’s colleague and fellow lawmaker responsible for the Biden impeachment inquiry, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, refused to comply with a “lawfully issued subpoena” from the special committee investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attempted insurrection at the Capitol.
“Let me get this straight,” Raskin said in a statement issued Tuesday. “After wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the Oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full Committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions they pose? What an epic humiliation for our colleagues and what a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own Members to pursue it.”
Looking stupid in the public eye won’t stop Republicans from moving ahead. In fact, they’re stepping up the pace. The psalm-singing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is proving to be as big a nincompoop as Comer, and that’s saying something.
Johnson, in a Wednesday press conference, said “alarming facts” have emerged from Comer’s probe – he didn’t cite specifics – and that while the impeachment, twice, of Trump when Democrats controlled the House was “brazenly political” and “meritless,” the current probe, he insisted, is “exactly the opposite.”
“We are the rule of law team; the Republican Party stands for the rule of law, and the people in charge of this are doing this thoroughly, carefully, methodically,” Johnson said. “They’re investigating and gathering all the facts. And to do this appropriately, to do it in a manner that upholds our constitutional responsibility, requires time.”
Trump was impeached for trying to convince the president of Ukraine to initiate an investigation into a political rival, Biden, and for instigating the Jan. 6 resurrection, both serious incidents. They’re moving on Biden for absolutely nothing.
Good lord, no wonder this country is troubled.
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Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the NKY Tribune.
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