Last night, Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson told Sean Hannity that he believed there was evidence that President Biden had committed impeachable offenses and that House Republicans would push forward with their bogus impeachment inquiry.
Unfortunately for Speaker MAGA Mike, after ten months, James Comer has failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. His latest report – that he hyped would be a bombshell – was another miss.
In response, Congressional Integrity Project executive director, Kyle Herrig, issued the following statement:
“Once again, James Comer has failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. In case you’ve lost track, that’s ten months of Comer claiming bombshells and failing to deliver any evidence of wrongdoing. But that isn’t stopping new Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson and the MAGA House Republican caucus from barrelling forward with their evidence-free impeachment inquiry. Instead of working to lower costs for working families, keep the government open, or support our allies under attack from dictators and terrorists, Speaker MAGA Mike, Comer, and MAGA House Republicans are continuing their political effort to hurt President Biden and help Trump.”
Northern Kentucky Tribune (Opinion): Jamie Comer Keeps Making Promises About ‘Evidence’ – And Keeps Failing To Provide It. “Oooh. That sounds really bad. Too bad it’s all – yet again – so much horse manure. First note that the $200,000 check was tendered in 2018 – while Biden was a private citizen, between the time he was vice president and a presidential candidate…. Raskin said ‘not a single transaction’ recorded in the financial records ‘shows any wrongdoing by the president.’ The documents do, however, ‘reveal personal transactions with the president’s family members that have no relevance to any legitimate congressional inquiry, including payments for things like groceries, vet visits, and plumbing repairs, and include multiple college savings accounts and one youth bank account for grandchildren of the president.” [Northern Kentucky Tribune (Opinion), 10/27/23]
HuffPost: ‘Fishing Expedition’: Impeachment Inquiry Demands Biden Prove Loan To Brother. “House Republicans demanded Thursday that President Joe Biden prove he loaned his brother money five years ago, a display of how broad their impeachment inquiry has become and how little it’s found so far. Money transfers between James and Joe Biden have no obvious connection to the main corruption allegation Republicans have pursued this year about the president’s son Hunter Biden’s controversial work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Republicans haven’t turned up any direct evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s controversial business dealings…. The check was marked as ‘loan repayment,’ and the White House said that’s all it was. […] Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat, said in a letter of his own on Thursday that the records are ‘clear evidence that this transaction was a short-term, interest-free loan between brothers’ and accused Comer of running a ‘baseless and voyeuristic fishing expedition’ against the president.” [HuffPost, 10/27/23]
Raw Story: GOP’s James Comer Hit With Brutal Fact Check Over Biden ‘money Laundering’ Scheme Claims. “No, James Biden’s $200,000 payment to his brother isn’t the proof of a mass ‘influence peddling scheme’ far-right Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would have you believe it is, a new FactCheck report finds. FactCheck’s review of the House Oversight and Accountability committee’s case against the Biden family, based on a bank statement subpoena that found a 2018 payment between brothers, found more evidence of bombast than bribes, the organization said Thursday. ‘As has been the case so often in the House investigation of the finances of Joe Biden’s family members,’ the report states, ‘the claims have outpaced the evidence so far.’ […] …‘The records don’t prove one way or another if Joe Biden was involved in the Americore Health enterprise,’ FactCheck states. ‘But the burden remains with Republicans on the oversight committee to prove their case.’” [Raw Story, 10/26/23]
The Messenger: GOP Touts Bombshell Biden Payments — But Records Suggest Otherwise. “Records reviewed by The Messenger revealed that the payment — $200,000 — was made from Joe Biden to James Biden in 2018, when the president was a private citizen. The payment came from an account maintained by Joe Biden’s attorney. James Biden paid that loan back, with no interest, in just over a month… Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said that the records being released by Comer don’t ‘add up to anything.’ ‘I suppose there is some brilliant comprehensive strategy to the drip, drip, drip release of these different facts,’ Raskin told The Messenger. ‘Basically, the Bidens are a family, and people loan each other money, people help each other out.’ Furthermore, Raskin said, ‘There have been no presidential crimes alleged here, much less impeachable offenses.’” [The Messenger, 10/26/23]
HuffPost: Another GOP ‘Bombshell’ About Joe Biden Turns Out To Be A Dud. “Comer has been leading Republicans’ investigation and impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which so far hasn’t implicated Biden himself and in recent weeks has been overshadowed by infighting among Republicans that has paralyzed the House of Representatives. Democrats on the Oversight Committee say the personal bank records recently provided to the committee do show that Biden loaned his brother the money. ‘These records actually show that President Biden was the one who stepped in to help family members when they needed support, including by providing short term loans to his brother,’ Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement. Raskin added that the 1,400 pages of records Republicans got from their subpoenas, which asked banks for several years of records relating to the president’s brother and son, show no wrongdoing, but do reveal ‘payments for things like groceries, vet visits, and plumbing repairs.’ HuffPost obtained check images and a spreadsheet reflecting wire transfer records that mostly corroborate Raskin’s claim about the $200,000 transaction from March 2018. The documents suggest an account connected to Joe Biden sent James Biden $40,000 in July 2017 and $200,000 in January 2018, and that James Biden paid the money back without interest.” [HuffPost, 10/23/23]
MSNBC (Opinion): James Comer’s Latest Biden Accusation Has One Glaring Flaw. “It’s not exactly a secret that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s crusade against President Joe Biden hasn’t gone especially well. After nearly a year of trying to uncover evidence of the Democrat receiving illicit payments before reaching the White House, the Kentucky Republican and his allies have come up empty. […] Based on the available information, Joe Biden — in his personal capacity, two years after serving as vice president — loaned his brother some money. Then, his brother paid him back. It’s why James Biden literally wrote on the check itself, ‘Loan repayment.’ That’s just not that interesting. Indeed, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell on [sic] California noted online soon after, ‘[Comer] proves Joe Biden generously loaned his family money and they responsibly paid him back. Nice work, detective!’ A day earlier, Steve Bannon, a veteran of the Trump White House and a prominent far-right media personality, labeled the Oversight Committee chairman ‘Comer the Clown.’ Evidently, Republicans hoped the public would take the story seriously because James Biden repaid his brother after receiving money from a hospital company he was working with. But again, this appears quite anodyne: James Biden needed a loan; Joe Biden helped his brother; and James Biden repaid the loan six weeks later when he had the money. (The future president did not charge any interest.) In other words, this latest pitch suffers from one glaring flaw: The story isn’t scandalous; it’s boring.” [MSNBC (Opinion) 10/23/23]
Newsweek: GOP Raising Alarm Over Joe Biden Getting $200K Loan Repayment Spurs Mockery. “Since Comer’s remarks, many have taken to X to mock the congressman’s claim, citing that the discovery of the check made out to Joe Biden was clearly indicated that the money was sent as a ‘loan repayment’ and before he was president… ‘Chairman Comer’s claim that Joe Biden benefitted from Americore’s payments to James Biden are squarely contradicted by the facts,’ the senior Democratic aide said. ‘While James Biden got $600,000 from Americore, Joe Biden simply got back the money he had loaned to his brother.” [Newsweek, 10/21/23]
Salon: Trump Keeps Stepping On The GOP’s So-Called Bombshells. “Upon examination, however, one can see that the check was marked as a repayment of a loan Joe Biden made to his brother a couple of months before, not a payoff of some sort. And furthermore, it was during the time that Joe Biden was completely out of office and hadn’t even decided if he was going to run — three years later. Yet Republicans found this check and immediately started running around in circles shrieking ‘smoking gun! smoking gun!’” [Salon, 10/23/23]