PRESS RELEASE Contact: press@congressionalintegrity.org
For Immediate Release
Date: January 30, 2023
Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, Congressional Integrity Project Senior Advisor Brad Woodhouse, Congressional Integrity Project Research Director Rebecca Parks, and Democratic strategist and former spokesperson and senior advisor for the GOP Oversight Committee Kurt Bardella, joined a press call hosted by the Congressional Integrity Project.
The virtual press conference followed Rep. James Comer’s appearance at the National Press Club and preceded the first “oversight” hearings of the MAGA Congress, which will expose Comer and his MAGA allies’ lack of credibility to conduct legitimate, unbiased investigations.
Comer and the MAGA House majority are deploying the Trump playbook to conduct their so-called “investigations.” Comer’s hypocrisy and lack of credibility show how much he and his allies in Congress don’t actually care about the American people or the work they were elected to do. Comer and his fellow MAGA Republicans are only focused on hurting President Biden and Democrats ahead of the 2024 election and gaining more power for themselves so they can force their MAGA agenda on the American people.
“I think we should probably call Chairman Comer ‘Coma-Comer,’ because only somebody who was in a coma during the four Trump years would investigate, without any irony, Joe Biden’s family finances and handling of classified documents,” said Representative Swalwell. “It’s clear that these guys have no credibility, but as they come forward with these attacks, they’re going to throw a lot of nonsense at the Biden administration. I think what’s important for us to defend the President, his administration, and his team, and we’ve got the guts to do that.”
“We haven’t heard a peep about the issues that matter to Americans from House Republicans since November,” said Congressional Integrity Project Senior Advisor, Brad Woodhouse. “This is not working for them, and the polling shows that it’s not working for them. An NBC poll says 55% of Americans say congressional Republicans will spend too much time investigating Biden and not enough on other priorities. 63% have no-too little confidence that Congress will conduct fair and impartial investigations into President Biden. This is their agenda and it’s not working. It doesn’t appear to be important to the American people, but this is what they’re most known for. We’re here to hold them accountable.”
“The ultra MAGA Republicans are obviously in charge of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. Oversight chair, James Comer, spent a lot of time talking about how he wants his committee to be seen as credible, but when you look at who’s on the committee, these are not serious people. These are conspiracy theorists, they’re election deniers, and deeply connected to the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election,” said Congressional Integrity Project Research Director, Rebecca Parks. “These are some of the absolute furthest right most Maga members of the Republican caucus and they’re right there. The committees are stacked with Trump’s biggest fans and ready to use their committees for revenge.”
“Yesterday, Comer was asked ‘What’s your evidence about any type of nefarious plot with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and foreign actors’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s why we’re doing the investigation’. Their motto right now is to make accusations first, and then try to use taxpayer resources to validate them later. It is the exact backward way of how you’re supposed to conduct congressional oversight,” said Kurt Bardella, Democratic strategist and former spokesperson and senior advisor for the GOP Oversight Committee. “They’re also counting on the fact that everybody will give them a pass on the complete zero oversight they conducted when Donald Trump was president, the most corrupt president in US history, who presided over the most corrupt government in US history. They did zero oversight.”
Watch the full briefing here.
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