The real impeachable offenses were the friends we made along the way.
This week, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) released a long-promised report on his year-and-a-half-long impeachment charade targeting President Biden. The report, which details how he failed to uncover a single shred of evidence of wrongdoing by the President whatsoever, is filled with the same debunked conspiracy theories, factual inaccuracies, and downright misinformation repeated by MAGA Republicans about the President for years. Recent headlines had described Comer’s lifeless probe into Biden as “a major threat to democracy” that has been “unraveling,” “doomed from the start,” “failed,” “falling apart,” “ending with a whimper,” and finally, “fizzled out.” The report was similarly described as “mean[ing] very little,” “a wild goose chase,” “a failed stunt,” and “recycled talking points.”
The end of this fruitless investigation exposes the reality that the MAGA House GOP has utterly wasted their majority investigating President Biden while ignoring the important priorities of hardworking Americans across the country – like the cost of living, access to health care, and more – all to do convicted felon Donald Trump’s bidding and attack their political rivals. Here are the top five facepalms from Comer’s multi-million-dollar flop:
1. Comer Promised “New Evidence.” His First Impeachment Inquiry Hearing Was Such An Utter Failure That He Didn’t Want To Hold Any Further Hearings. Comer’s long-promised inaugural impeachment hearing in September 2023 was a complete and utter failure, a “disappointment before it started” as the country reeled toward a GOP government shutdown.
Ahead of the hearing, Comer promised, “I think you’ll see over the next 48 hours, we’re gonna release some new evidence of wrongdoing by the Biden family,” and boasted that the first impeachment hearing would focus on the “mountains of evidence.” Instead, two of Republicans’ three witnesses directly testified that there was no evidence to support impeachment. The third was fact-checked for misrepresenting the name “Biden” in her oral testimony, referring only to Hunter Biden instead of President Biden in her commentary entitled, “You’d Go To Prison For What Biden Did.”
During questioning, all three witnesses testified that they did not come to present any first-hand witness accounts of crimes committed by President Biden. As a fourth witness at the hearing testified, “The problem is that the dots are not connected…there have been lots of assumptions, lots of accusations, but not evidence. […] If that’s what exists as a basis for this inquiry, it is not sufficient.”
The hearing was near-universally criticized. Members of Comer’s own caucus, ranging from MAGA darling Lauren Boebert (R-CO), admonished his antics at the hearing, as did longtime impeachment skeptic Ken Buck (R-CO), Republican staffers, and even a former Trump administration official. After the fiasco, Comer himself admitted that it went so poorly that he didn’t want to hold any more hearings.
2. Comer Hyped A Supposed Star Witness Whose Testimony Failed To Prove That President Biden Did Anything Wrong. In late July 2023, the day before Trump was indicted for a third time on charges related to the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in 2021, a business associate of Hunter Biden appeared before the Oversight Committee to testify at the invitation of Comer. For weeks in advance, Comer hyped the upcoming interview as bombshell testimony and declared the testimony evidence of a quid pro quo.
But Archer’s testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence of a single conflict of interest of President Biden ever doing anything in connection to Hunter Biden’s business ventures. Comer also hyped a portion of testimony by Hunter Biden’s business associate Devon Archer suggesting that Joe Biden supposedly joined Hunter on speakerphone while speaking with business associates up to 20 times. The reality, however, was that Archer’s testimony referred to approximately 20 instances over a decade in which Hunter indicated Joe Biden was merely present; Archer did not testify that President Biden was directly involved in business discussions beyond “the brand” – only that he held casual conversations about “the weather” and “fishing.”
To make matters worse, Comer lied about skipping the so-called bombshell testimony that contradicted his unsubstantiated allegations about President Biden. Comer himself could not be bothered to show up for Archer’s testimony despite hyping the upcoming interview for weeks in advance, Comer hyped the upcoming interview as bombshell testimony. Yet even Oversight committee staffers were unwilling to cover for Comer’s lies, refusing to say if Comer phoned in and saying he was in “constant contact” with staff during the interview. One GOP source even said, “It was like following a general into battle, but the general decided to stay home instead of fight.”
3. Comer’s IRS Whistleblowers Contradicted His Claims, Testifying That There’s No Evidence President Biden Interfered In IRS/DOJ Investigations Into Hunter Biden. Comer has long accused the Department of Justice and IRS of instigating a “cover-up” of an investigation into Hunter Biden. For months, Comer cited to the press four individuals he claimed were “whistleblowers.” But there was a key problem with Comer’s narrative: they weren’t whistleblowers, and there were only two people. As Ranking Member Raskin wrote to Comer in a letter obtained by the Washington Post: “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.” Even after being exposed for lying, Comer called their testimony “pivotal,” and “evidence of a cover-up.”
Despite their lofty claims, however, Comer’s two IRS whistleblowers themselves testified, under oath, that neither President Biden nor his Attorney General interfered in the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice’s investigation into Hunter Biden.
4. Comer Promised A New Hearing Featuring Recycled, Fringe Witnesses Would “Iron Out” His Dying Impeachment Probe. It Was Over Before It Started. On Mar. 20, House Republicans on the Oversight Committee held yet another impeachment stunt hearing lacking any credibility. In addition to inviting convicted felon Jason Galanis to appear virtually from prison, House Republicans summoned Trump-aligned MAGA insider Tony Bobulinski to testify. Both witnesses’ past testimonies were filled with lies, contradictions, and Russian disinformation, but that didn’t stop House Republicans from platforming these baseless allegations.
Unsurprisingly, the two witnesses utterly failed to produce any evidence implicating President Biden. Before the hearing, the stalled impeachment inquiry was already in a death spiral, with MAGA Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to give clear answers on his willingness to impeach the president, and even members of the far-right Freedom Caucus expressing doubts.
But Comer hyped his investigation as a “huge success” and said the House GOP “actually need[ed]” another public hearing to simply “iron out the discrepancies.” Both witnesses’ past testimonies were filled with lies, contradictions, and Russian disinformation, and unsurprisingly, the two witnesses utterly failed to produce any evidence implicating President Biden.
Even right-wing media was unmoved. A Newsmax host said, “It kind of seems like you’re chasing your tail at this point.” A Fox News host admitted, “It just feels like they keep doing the same hearing over and over again,” while another Fox News legal analyst confessed, “I do think maybe people are becoming a bit tired of all of this.” After the hearing, Comer told right-wing audiences, “Nobody wants to wrap this up more than I do. I’m ready to try to begin to close this investigation.” The stalled impeachment inquiry was already in a death spiral even before the hearing, with MAGA Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to give clear answers on his willingness to impeach the president, and even members of the far-right Freedom Caucus expressing doubts.
5. Comer Promised His Key Source, Alexander Smirnov, Was Credible. Then the Source Was Exposed For Spreading Russian Disinformation While On Trump’s Business Associates’ Payroll. Throughout Comer’s baseless impeachment probe, his core allegations have centered around an FBI form FD-1023 dating back to 2020 that documented key informant Alexander Smirnov’s secondhand account of a conversation between officials at Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Republicans spent nearly a year promoting Alexander Smirnov’s account as their key source of evidence supposedly implicating President Biden in a so-called bribery scheme.
In Summer 2023, Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) subpoenaed the FBI for the confidential form FD-1023 documenting Smirnov’s claims. They began hyping the potential existence of audio tapes, alleged by Alexander Smirnov, supposedly proving President Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian energy company during the Obama administration. Yet despite hyping these claims for weeks on end, even as Comer later admitted, “we don’t know if they are legit or not.” After releasing a redacted version of the document, Comer revealed that it was just an uncorroborated FBI tip, not concrete evidence of a crime. Worse still, the owner of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma had already rebutted the uncorroborated bribery allegations back in 2019.
In 2019, disgraced Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associate Lev Parnas interviewed Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. Not only did Zlochevsky flatly deny the allegations reported in the form FD-1023, but Giuliani demanded the interview transcript be concealed, telling Parnas: “‘What is this shit? This is bullshit. Make sure nobody sees this. Bury this.’” In interview after interview with friendly right-wing hosts, Comer had claimed that Smirnov’s bribery documented in the FBI form FD-1023 had nothing to do with Giuliani – yet Giuliani openly admitted his involvement in the scheme. Giuliani said during several Newsmax TV appearances that he alerted the Justice Department to the allegations: “That document was discovered because it was at least one FBI agent that went out and tried to corroborate what I gave them.”
Despite this information, Comer continued trying to validate Smirnov’s allegations against President Biden, exposing himself for blatantly ignoring the evidence that Smirnov’s allegations were not credible from the very start. But witness testimony revealed that the Trump-era FBI spent eight months exhaustively assessing the allegations detailed in the Form FD-1023, only to close the case after gathering information from forty confidential sources and finding insufficient evidence to warrant escalating the allegations to a preliminary or full investigation. A Trump-era investigator who spent eight months exhaustively assessing the allegations detailed in the form FD-1023 even testified that he closed the case after finding insufficient evidence to warrant escalating the allegations to a preliminary or full investigation.
On. Feb. 15, a federal court unsealed a two-count indictment against Smirnov, charging him with making false statements accusing President Biden and his son Hunter of corruption and bribery and exposing the debunked, criminal lie at the center of Comer’s baseless impeachment inquiry. Just days later, Smirnov was also exposed for meeting with and being fed information by Russian intelligence officials. Even though Comer had sworn up and down that Smirnov was credible, he started scrambling to sweep it all under the rug as soon as Smirnov’s indictment went public and Russian ties were exposed, telling reporters, “he wasn’t an important part of this investigation because I didn’t even know who he was,” and deleting references to the allegations in a letter to an upcoming witness.
In mid-March, new reporting revealed that Smirnov also received over half a million dollars from a U.S. firm tied to Trump’s business associates during the same year he began feeding the FBI lies about the Biden family. Journalists also found that serious doubts about Smirnov’s credibility had been raised nearly a decade ago after Smirnov was accused of lying in an earlier criminal case – his credibility issues may have even led to a sharp reduction in sentencing recommendations by federal prosecutors.