After House Oversight Chair James Comer failed to get what he wanted out of today’s testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business associate, he has taken to right wing media claiming President Biden lied. About what, no one is exactly sure.
Before he starts throwing stones, James Comer should take a look at his own extensive lies. We’ve been keeping track:
June 2023: Comer Repeatedly Claimed That Bribery Allegations Had Nothing To Do With Giuliani – But Rudy Says It Was All Him. In interview after interview with friendly right wing hosts James Comer has claimed that supposed bribery allegations against Joe Biden have nothing to do with disgraced Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. “They tried to say it had something to do with Rudy Giuliani, and it did not have anything to do with Giuliani,” Comer complained to Jesse Watters on June 7. On June 6, he told Fox’s Faulkner Harris that it was a “bold faced lie” to suggest that the FBI document has anything to do with Rudy Giuliani. The same day he insisted to Newsmax that, “This has nothing to do with Rudy Giuliani. This Form 1023 has nothing to do with Rudy Giuliani.” The only problem with Comer’s vehement statements? They’re not true. Rudy Giuliani himself has taken credit for the allegations. Giuliani has said during several Newsmax TV appearances that he alerted the Justice Department to the allegation. “The document they’re talking about, the $10 million bribe from Mykola Zlochevsky, it really is the tip of the iceberg,” Giuliani said on Newsmax on June 10. “That document was discovered because it was at least one FBI agent that went out and tried to corroborate what I gave them.”
June 2023: Comer Admitted He Didn’t Know If Supposed Bombshell ‘Bribery Tapes’ Are “Legit Or Not.” “Yet, while top GOP lawmakers have breathlessly promoted these purported tapes as an absolute bombshell proving the corruption of the president and his family, they’ve simultaneously acknowledged that these recordings may not exist at all and could be ‘just a bluff.’… ‘Well again, we don’t know really if the tapes exist, we just don’t know that, whether this was just a bluff on the part of whoever the executive was,’ the Wisconsin lawmaker said on Wednesday… House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), who has been the driving force behind the Biden investigations, also admitted on Tuesday that ‘we don’t know if they are legit or not.’” [Daily Beast, 6/15/23]
May 2023: Comer Failed To Produce Evidence Linking President Biden To Outlandish Claims After Hyping Allegations For Weeks. “[T]he highly anticipated press conference also raises fresh questions about their ability to ultimately capture their white whale: the president himself. And Comer’s already faced plenty of doubt, including from some within his own party, that he can back up his promises to show Biden’s connection to his family’s business dealings. No link has publicly emerged, and that didn’t change at Wednesday’s press conference. Asked if he would ultimately be able to prove his central thesis, Comer sidestepped […] But even as Republicans continue to rhetorically circle around Biden, much of the investigative effort they revealed on Wednesday centered around a network of businesses related to his family members and their associates. […] [Oversight Republicans’ memo] also doesn’t show any way Biden’s decisions were influenced by those agreements or that he had direct knowledge of them. And while Republicans have criticized the payments as questionable, they stopped short of calling any of the activity potentially illegal.” [Politico, 5/10/23]
- Fox News Host to Comer: “’You Don’t Actually Have Any Facts.” “Fox News host Steve Doocy pushed back against Rep. James Comer (R-KY) after the powerful Oversight Committee chairman claimed President Joe Biden and his family were engaged in an influence-peddling scheme. ‘I know the Republicans said that the smoking gun were these financial records that you were able to subpoena and got your hands on,’ Doocy told Comer on Thursday. ‘And your party, the Republican investigators, say that that’s proof of influence peddling by Hunter and James [Biden].’ ‘But that’s just your suggestion,’ the Fox News host added. ‘You don’t actually have any facts to that point. You’ve got some circumstantial evidence.’ Doocy added: ‘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.’” [Raw Story, 5/11/23]
- Comer: “We’ve Uncovered More Than, I Think, Any Congressional Committees Ever Uncovered.” “[T]his is taking a long time, but look, I haven’t had subpoena power 100 days, and we’ve uncovered more than, I think, any congressional committees ever uncovered. Normally, you’re working with the media on stuff like this, but we’re on our own. We’re having to fight the mainstream media.” [“Fox & Friends First,” Fox News, 5/9/23; VIDEO]
- Comer: Tomorrow Is Going To Be ‘Judgment Day’ For The White House. “[I]t’s gonna be Judgment Day tomorrow for the White House. […] these are some very serious charges and any other American family would have already been indicted and probably gone to prison for some of the things that the Biden family has done. So tomorrow is going to be Judgment Day and it’d be very interesting to see what Jean Pierre and little Ian Sams have to say when they’re presented with evidence.” [“Fox & Friends First,” Fox News, 5/9/23; VIDEO]
- Comer: “The Allegations And The Things We’re Investigating Make Watergate Look Like Jaywalking.” “This is a very serious investigation. The allegations and the things that we’re investigating make Watergate look like jaywalking. I mean, this is a very serious investigation of public corruption of a historical proportion. If, in fact, Joe Biden has committed these crimes that we’re investigating him, then I think everything’s on the table.” [“Wake Up America,” Newsmax, 4/27/23; VIDEO]
- Comer: “You’re Going To Learn Without A Shadow Of A Doubt That The President Of The United States Has Lied Countless Times.” “You’re going to learn without a shadow of a doubt that the President of the United States has lied countless times about his knowledge, and his involvement in his family shady business dealings.” [“Wake Up America,” Newsmax, 5/8/23; VIDEO]
May 2023: Comer Called Out For Hyping “Unsubstantiated” FBI Allegations, Despite Offering “No Evidence.” In May 2023, James Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley published an open letter to the FBI announcing subpoenas for internal documents flagged by a supposed whistleblower as evidence of corruption. Comer was immediately called out for pushing unsubstantiated allegations. The Associated Press noted, “the lawmakers used the word ‘alleged’ three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations.” HuffPost reporters concurred: “[Republicans] acknowledged they don’t know if the allegation will pan out. […] Comer has previously sought to tie Biden to allegedly corrupt businesses [sic] dealings by his son Hunter Biden. […] A number of other Republicans appeared on Fox News to weigh in on the latest supposed criminal evidence, backing the allegation despite the scarcity of details.”
- Comer Invoked ‘Deep State’ Conspiracies Dozens of Times In Interviews, Claiming Whistleblowers “Fear For Their Lives” From Biden Family & Unnamed Rogue Government Actors. “As I said on Fox, [whistleblowers] fear for their lives, not just from the Biden family, from rogue intelligence people within our government.” [Brian Kilmeade Show, 5/1/23]
February 2023: Comer Blatantly Misrepresented Whistleblowers, Then Refused to Produce Evidence Substantiating His Claims. Earlier this year, Comer blatantly misrepresented witnesses in his investigation, claiming he connected with “four whistleblowers” as part of his investigation. But after Comer hyped the so-called whistleblowers on Fox News and Breitbart, his Democratic House Oversight Committee members called him out for misrepresenting the number of individuals (two were identified, not four), their status (not official whistleblowers), and the impact of their testimony (no new witness information provided). To date, Comer has refused to produce any new evidence to back up his claims.
February 2023: In His First Oversight Hearing, Comer Pushed a “Factually Unsupported Narrative” About The ‘Twitter Files’. After one of the GOP House Oversight committee’s first hearings, Chairman Comer got called out for pushing “a factually unsupported narrative about the federal government secretly colluding with Twitter,” despite “no real evidence to support this weighty and consequential claim.”
- Republicans’ Own Witnesses Contradicted Comer’s Claims: “No Unlawful Collusion.” During House Oversight’s first hearing, former Twitter Deputy General Counsel James Baker told the committee, “I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation.” Even ‘Twitter Files’ author Matt Taibbi (who testified in front of a separate committee hearing in March) could not substantiate Comer’s claims: “there is no evidence — that I’ve seen — of any government involvement in the laptop story.
December 2022: Comer Falsely Claimed ‘Twitter Files’ Showed Evidence Of So-Called Collusion on Fox News. They Didn’t. Shortly after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he hand-picked a group of right-wing journalists to release a carefully-curated cache of internal documents. After some of the documents were released, Comer took to Fox News to claim that Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ contained “evidence” that President Biden’s campaign supposedly “colluded” with Big Tech. But the evidence wasn’t there: “The unsupported claim […], of course, is not what the selectively released company documents show.”
November 2022: During His First Press Conference, Comer Said He Had “Evidence of Federal Crimes.” His Report Failed To Name A Single Crime. During his first press conference after Republicans won a House majority in November 2022, Comer declared: “Committee Republicans have uncovered evidence of federal crimes committed by, and to the benefit of, members of the president’s family.” But when he released a 31-page interim report, reporters noted that it lacked evidence and declined to specify charges: “[the report] does not make specific allegations about the Biden family or their alleged crimes. Indeed, the report stops short of listing any of the specific crimes listed by Comer…it does, however, accuse the Biden family.”
October 2022: Fact Checkers Called Out Comer For “Need[ing] To Get His Facts Straight” On Hunter Biden Claims. Weeks before the 2022 midterm elections, Rep. Comer made false and unsubstantiated claims about President Biden’s civilian family on Fox News: “Hunter Biden committed serious crimes, as you mentioned, 150 suspicious activity reports. […] But yet the FBI did nothing about it.” Just days later, Comer got called out by independent fact checkers for lying to Americans about Hunter Biden. An investigative reporter wrote that Comer “needs to get his facts straight” after making numerous false and/or unsubstantiated claims about foreign business dealings.