House Republican "Investigations" and Other Total Nonsense

[LFC]

Republicans, having just found out they're definitely taking the House, are already talking about Hunter Biden "investigations." I suspect there will be many, many more based on ... nothing. This thread is for all that nonsense. No surprise but Gym Jordan is one of the primary douche nozzles.

Get Ready, Folks

The bullshit has already begun.

The GOP won the House yesterday, and the first order of business is to tee up the Hunter Biden “investigations.”

At 9:30 a.m. ET, the incoming chairmen of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees will hold a press conference on Capitol Hill to preview their bogus probes into the President’s son.

Let me repeat: These are the new chairmen of two major House committees, not some fringe backbenchers angling for airtime.

The culprits are Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY). But it’s not just them. It’s the whole right-wing apparatus rolling out the B-E-N-G-H-A-Z-I playbook.

It was on full display on Sean Hannity’s show last night. First, presumed incoming Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had his own segment talking up various investigations of the Biden administration. Then Jordan and Comer immediately followed with their own lengthy segment on the Hunter Biden nonsense.

“We are going to make it very clear that this is now an investigation of President Biden,” Comer told Hannity about their focus on Hunter.

Media coverage of these manufactured scandals is so painful to watch: taking them seriously, amplifying the bogosity, making them part of the national political agenda. For our part, we’re going to be vigilant in telling you a toxic circus has come to town without trafficking in elephant manure. Onward.

[LFC]

Here's a list of things Republicans already said they'd do with a House majority. It's going to be a non-stop screechfest.

But we do know what they’ll try to do, at least. Long anticipating a win, Republicans have been candid with their intentions. They’ll use their new committee perches to launch investigation after investigation into everything from Hunter Biden to Afghanistan to baseless accusations of fraud in the 2020 election.

They’ll try to hold the debt ceiling hostage — reportedly in exchange for cuts to Medicaid and Social Security — threatening to force the United States to default on its debt and sparking a global financial crisis. The danger of such a gambit is all the greater as the House coalition is increasingly in the thrall of hard-right actors.

They’ll move to impeach President Joe Biden and, likely, assorted Cabinet members. Some Republicans have admitted that they haven’t settled on a reason for impeachment yet, but revenge for then-President Donald Trump’s impeachments seems to be enough for now. Even if they manage to wrangle the necessary House votes, the Senate will not remove the various Democrats from office, due to the two-thirds majority needed to convict.

House Republicans will likely shut down the Jan. 6 Committee, and, per comments from McCarthy, may block once-bipartisan measures like aid for Ukraine.

They’ll also attempt to pass a raft of legislation, from culture war red meat like anti-trans bills to various measures to slash the social safety net. They may even take a stab at a national abortion ban.

The Democratic Senate will act as a backstop to these bills, preventing Biden from having to take tough vetoes: imagine a radical Republican Congress tying some crucial aid package to Medicaid cuts or an abortion ban or a national “Hunter Biden sucks” day.

For Democrats the powerless, pointless, useless, and endless machinations of right-wingnutter in the House may make campaigning easier in 2024.

But aside from still maintaining their ability to keep confirming judges, Democrats may find another glimmer of hope in losing the lower chamber: there’s something to be said for governing against a foil. The 2024 election will eclipse 2022 in importance and direness. A Republican House that Democrats can cast as radical, vengeful and obstinate might be a blessing in disguise when it comes time for Biden and the Democrats to sell themselves to voters for another term.

[LFC]

It's started ... bigly.

Key soon-to-be House Republican committee chairs, flanked by members with funereal expressions and unintelligible visual aids, unveiled their big investigatory plans for January: something something Hunter Biden.

For those not well-versed in the rabbit holes of the right’s Hunter Biden fixation, the “crimes” were a bit hard to follow.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who will soon be in charge of the Oversight Committee, swung from one accusation to the next, as committee members shuffled back and forth to clear sightlines to the arresting poster boards.

As every good investigator knows, the best way to convince an audience of the severity of the crimes committed is to present them in a language most of the assembled people don’t read.



You could practically hear reporters start to salivate as he crescendoed on the ever-titillating phrases “direct equity holder,” “PowerPoint presentation,” “keys to his new office space.”

After delivering the phrase “human trafficking” three times in quick succession, at helpfully high volume, Comer berated the crowd — hey now, this is not about the prostitute he accidentally mentioned multiple times.

“I dont want this to be about the prostitute,” Comer said humbly. “Here’s the thing: Hunter Biden isn’t this innocent guy that just got a bad rap because he had a drug problem and Republicans don’t need to waste any time on Hunter Biden — we’re not trying to prove that Hunter Biden is a bad actor, he is,” he said, adding what should have been obvious from the past 20 minutes: “Our investigation is about Joe Biden.”

So Hunter Biden is a drug addicted human trafficker, but Republicans don’t need to bother doing a 33-minute press conference detailing his supposed sins because THIS ISN’T ABOUT HIM GODDAMNIT, it’s just about his prostitute and his white collar crimes and his general suckishness. Got it?!

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) stepped in for an assist, helpfully coatless, the better to flap around a Politico article print-out. In his auctioneer’s cadence, he reminded the crowd that Republicans also have many a bone to pick with the FBI, the newest chapter of their enduring, unshakeable support for American law enforcement.

Read on for further wingnuttery.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 17, 2022 19:29:17 GMT LFC said:

It's started ... bigly.

Read on for further wingnuttery.

No thanks!  I'll vomit and prefer to put that off until January when it all starts.

[LFC]

MTG says she's been told that Republican controlled committees will "investigate" Nancy Pelosi over Capitol security on Jan. 6 (a.k.a. the day of a normal tourist visit) and the treatment of the traitors who attacked the Capitol.

Amazing how Jan. 6 is a non-issue that MUST BE INVESTIGATED!

[LFC]

Esquire summarizes the upcoming clown show.

On Thursday morning, Reps. Jim Jordan and James Comer held themselves a press conference on Capitol Hill. This is significant because these two will be powers in the next House of Representatives. And that is unfortunate because they are also crazy snipe hunters who plan to look for Faucis under every bed. From Politico:

House Republican members have threatened to investigate Biden and elements of his administration since early in his presidency. But only starting in January, following their projected retaking of the House majority on Wednesday, will they have the ability to set the agenda for the House and its committees. Asked about potential Republican investigations, McCarthy made reference to the origins of the Covid-19 virus; the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ job performance; and whether there could be terrorists coming across the border. “What do they have planned? Who are they talking to, and why are they here? That is just the start,” McCarthy said of possible investigations on undocumented immigrants.

Kevin McCarthy, a career-long political invertebrate on his best days, will owe his potential speakership to members of this reptile farm executive committee. Besides, Republicans have no worthwhile policy proposals to speak of, and the ones of which they are most enamored will never get through a Democratic Senate, much less that Senate's overriding of a presidential veto. The snipe hunters know that, McCarthy knows it. Every single Democrat knows it.

So Jordan likely will get the gavel on the Judiciary committee, and Comer likely will get the gavel on Oversight, and the circus will come to town with dancing bears and brass bands.

I found this author note on the 1,000 page document dump Republicans made to be pretty interesting. He says, "[Ed. Note: Those 1,000 pages contained 983 pages that reproduced emails between the snipe hunters.]" Their bit "evidence" was literally nothing more than their fact free echo chamber in writing.

He finishes with this.

It will be fascinating to see how many of these whistleblowers actually show up to put their hands on the Bible and their asses at risk of perjury. But anyone who saw the likes of Comer and especially Jordan defend the criminal presidency of El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago through two impeachment proceedings knows that in the hands of these two worthies, the Constitution is approximately as safe as it would be in an Ohio State shower room.

[LFC]

In order to get the House Speaker position Kevin McCarthy is all in on fascism and punishment of political enemies.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) vowed on Sunday to remove Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from House committees under his leadership.

“One thing I said from the very beginning, Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the public sector,” McCarthy said on Fox News. “Why would we ever give him a security clearance and the secrets to America? So, I will not allow him to be on Intel.”

“You have Adam Schiff, who lied to the American public time and again – we will not allow him to be on the Intel Committee either,” he continued. “Look at Congresswoman Omar, her antisemitic comments that have gone forward. We’re not going to allow her to be on Foreign Affairs.”

Remember that MTG was removed from her committees because she literally posted incitements of violence against Democrats. Boebert was proposed for removal for anti-Muslim hate speech. Oh, yeah. And McCarthy is lying when he accuses Adam Schiff of having lied. In other words, all typical Republicanism.

[LFC]

TAC is on the Hunter Biden laptop train too. Somebody pointed out that the problem the right-wingnuts have now is that any chain of custody of the laptop is completely f***ed. Sure, they'll screech and yell, whether something is true, not really what they say it is, or just fabricated, but that's not going to help in court.

If they call in Biden to testify I hope he acts exactly like a Trump.

• Stall and drag his feet
• Refuse to testify
• Fight any subpoena at every level of the courts
• Demand more stalling time
• If forced to testify say, "As Donald Trump, Jr. (actually a rotating list of Republican names) said "I plead the Fifth."

[LFC]

Here we go. From TPM:

Hold Onto Your Hats!

Republicans officially take over the House today. It’s going to be a zoo on the House side for the next two years.

You can’t overstate what a destructive menace this House majority represents. And yet … don’t lose sight of the fact that with a Democratic Senate and White House, the House GOP has very limited power.

What’s fascinating about the new House majority, what makes it a great story, is how it embodies all the worst elements of what the Republican Party and conservative movement have become: anti-democratic, corrupt, unmoored from principle, ungovernable, uninterested in governing, cruel, and destructive — while also being comically absurd.

But keep in mind the outrageous and transgressive conduct that the House GOP campaigned on, is promising to continue, and in fact revels in is its only real political currency. That is its appeal to its supporters. That is the point. It is performative, especially with Democrats controlling the White House and Senate.

A sophisticated approach to understanding and covering the House GOP requires not launching into a cycle of outrage and indignation over its transgressions.

The Arsonists Plan To Investigate The Firefighters

It’s painful to watch the coverage of the change of power in the House covered in the same traditional, low key way — as if Jan. 6 hadn’t happened, as if the insurrectionists themselves aren’t returning to power, and as if a principle aim of the insurrectionists isn’t to thwart and undermine any investigations of the insurrection. But here we are.

The rush by the Jan. 6 committee to dump its work product into the public domain is best seen as an effort to protect the committee’s work from the incoming House GOP majority.

As one of its last acts, the committee warned the Biden White House in a Dec. 30 letter that with the new incoming House leadership it could no longer assure the anonymity of cooperating witnesses.

[LFC]

The Biden White House has just signaled what House Republicans will be up against in their "investigations."

The Biden White House launched its first major broadside in response to incoming House Republicans likely to spearhead aggressive oversight of the administration.

A top lawyer for the president pledged in letters to those members that the administration would operate in good faith with them. But he also said that oversight demands made by congressional Republicans during the last Congress would have to be started over.

In respective letters to Reps. James Comer (R-Ky) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), White House Special Counsel Richard Sauber said that the Biden administration had no immediate plans to respond to a slew of records requests that both men made the past several weeks. In those letters, obtained exclusively by POLITICO, Sauber described such requests as constitutionally illegitimate because both Jordan, who is expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee, and Comer, who is expected to head the Oversight Committee, made them before they had any authority to do so.

“Congress has not delegated such [oversight] authority to individual members of Congress who are not committee chairmen, and the House has not done so under its current Rules,” wrote Sauber, one of the White House’s top oversight lawyers.

Sauber did not rule out satisfying the requests once the next Congress is sworn in. But his letter nevertheless represents the first volley in what is likely to be a contentious and potentially litigious two years between House Republicans and the Biden White House. More narrowly, it is an apparent effort to shield the administration from a hail of potential subpoenas in early January by describing them as an abuse of the normal process of congressional oversight.

In a Nov. 18, 2022, letter to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Jordan had warned that if his requests for documents from the administration remained outstanding at the beginning of the 118th Congress, “the Committee may be forced to resort to compulsory process to obtain the material we require.”

On Thursday, Comer sharply criticized the administration for its letter saying it would not immediately satisfy his records request.

[snip]

White House officials, who briefed POLITICO, point to long-standing practice, going back to President Ronald Reagan’s administration, that ranking members in the minority do not jump-start the accommodations process on formal investigative requests. Sauber’s letter tells Jordan and Comer they should not expect records requests to be satisfied before they take their committee’s respective gavels.

I read elsewhere that administration lawyers have already cited legal opinions written by the Trump administration to House Republicans. Sure they're shit, but they're Republican shit and Biden's crew is not above shoving it up their noses. This should be good, watching Republicans being forced to go into court and assaulting their guy and the opinions they refused to speak up against.

It's been noted in multiple places that Gym Jordan is screeching about subpoenas while he was a guy who refused to honor a subpoena. He set the precedent so good luck having any House Democrat show up if they decide it's not in their best interest.

[LFC]

Gym Jordan, pervert protector, is unchained and a threat to democracy. He's going everything he can to rewrite the history of the Jan 6 Republican Insurrection that he supported.

It’s Going To Get Worse Before It Gets Better

Jim Jordan comes into the new Congress as a kingmaker unaccountable to anyone or anything. He backed Kevin McCarthy to the hilt, and he’s won newfound powers as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney examines the role Jordan will plan in the new select subcommittee to investigate the investigators probing Jan. 6.

The language creating the new subcommittee gives specific authority scrutinize “ongoing criminal investigations.”

As former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance notes:

This idea of “reviewing” criminal cases in progress is really about interfering with them & it violates separation of powers. MAGA Republicans know this. They’re setting up a situation where the AG will properly refuse to provide info, which they’ll use as a pretext to impeach.

The Justice Department is unlikely to roll over and start providing investigative material in ongoing cases to the House GOP. There are serious separation of powers issues that should bolster Attorney General Merrick Garland’s resistance to this concerted attack on the rule of law.

But Jordan’s mission is still successful if he able to obscure, muddy and delegitimize the Jan. 6 investigations. With the House GOP complicit in the scheme that culminated in Jan. 6, these sorts of rearguard actions remain part of the original coup attempt. Now they’re aimed at preventing accountability. It’s part of the coverup.

It’s going to be a long two years.

[goldenvalley]

Here's a Biden thing to investigate.  Not Hunter, but Joe.  Some classified documents found in an office he used in the last few years.  Trump must be dancing a jig now.

The documents found in Mr. Biden’s former office, which date to his time as vice president, were found by his personal lawyers on Nov. 2, when they were packing files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, according to the White House. Officials did not describe precisely how many documents were involved, what kind of information they included or their level of classification.

The White House said in a statement that the White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives and Records Administration on the same day the documents were found “in a locked closet” and that the agency retrieved them the next morning.

Mr. Biden had periodically used an office at the center from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 presidential campaign, and the lawyers were packing it up in preparations to vacate the space. The discovery was not in response to any prior request from the archives, and there was no indication that Mr. Biden or his team resisted efforts to recover any sensitive documents.

Mr. Garland has assigned John R. Lausch Jr., the U.S. attorney in Chicago who was appointed by Mr. Trump, to look into the matter, according to two people familiar with the decision, confirming a CBS News report. Mr. Lausch has been scrutinizing the situation since November, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Two people familiar with the matter said that Mr. Lausch has been conducting a so-called initial investigation under a Justice Department regulation that allows an attorney general to appoint a special counsel, a special prosecutor who operates with a measure of day-to-day independence to conduct a particularly sensitive investigation.

[LFC]

TPM already telegraphed how bad the reporting and Republican lies are and will continue to be because ... of course it will.

Deep Breath

I’m going to put this here right now and probably return to it in a future Morning Memo.

As you probably saw, CBS News first reported Monday that back in November private lawyers for President Biden found classified documents from his vice presidency at the think tank he previously set up in DC. CBS’s report was quickly confirmed and reproduced by other major new outlets.

The specific facts matter a great deal, so here’s what’s reported so far:

• The Biden lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and turned over the classified materials, which amounted to about 10 documents.

• The National Archives notified the Justice Department.

• Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed the U.S. attorney in Chicago – a holdover Trump appointee – to conduct a preliminary investigation into the matter to help determine whether a special counsel should be appointed.

You might not know it from the initial round of punditry, but it is not a sophisticated political analysis to anticipate the myriad ways in which Republicans and Trumpworld will use this news in bad faith ways to defend the Mar-a-Lago case.

Of course that’s exactly what Republicans did. Here’s Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, eager to be interviewed:
How ironic. Now we learn that Joe Biden had documents that are considered classified. I wonder, is the National Archives going to trigger a raid of the White House tonight? Or of the Biden Center? …

So now we’re going to take that information that we requested on the Mar-a-Lago raid, and we’re going to expand it to include the documents that Joe Biden has.

For now, let me kick it over to EmptyWheel.

EmptyWheel eviscerated the NY Times. They continue their record of hackish coverage. I don't know if it's the editorial staff or if they are just now brimming with second string journalists who just can't get a full story right.

The report has generated a lot of insanely bad reporting, including this article from the NYT — with four reporters bylined and two more contributing — that doesn’t even mention a key detail from a recent Alan Feuer scoop (which I wrote about here): that Beryl Howell might yet hold Trump or his lawyers in contempt for failing to return all the classified documents in his possession.

Peter Baker and his colleagues didn’t mention that recent NYT scoop, but it did see fit to quote the former President without fact check. Nor did they note that Biden is not complaining that this is under investigation, whereas Trump has never shut up about it. Indeed, a key part of Trump’s defense has been that NARA had no authority to refer the matter for investigation. So Trump’s embrace of this investigation eliminates a claim he has been relying on in his own defense.

Another amusing difference is that for the entirety of the Trump Administration, Biden continued to have clearance; Biden decided not to continue intelligence briefings for Trump shortly after he launched a coup attempt.

Some outlets, including the NYT, have managed to explain that unlike Trump, the Biden office did not refuse to give documents back — though many, like the NYT, have insane comments about why Biden and DOJ didn’t disclose an ongoing investigation when (among other things) that would violate DOJ policy.

[LFC]

Best people.

House Republicans have reinstated far-right Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona on committees again after Democrats stripped them of that privilege in 2021, multiple GOP sources said.

The GOP Steering Committee, which doles out committee gavels and seats, voted to give Greene and Gosar spots on the Oversight and Accountability Committee, which plans to launch numerous investigations into President Joe Biden and his administration.

Gosar also secured an assignment on the Natural Resources Committee. Democrats had booted him off both panels in the last Congress.

Greene also won a seat on the Homeland Security Committee, which Republicans will use to focus on border security and to investigate Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Last week, a House Republican from Texas filed articles of impeachment against Mayorkas.

[LFC]

Gym Jordan's "committee" is Durham 2.0, with America's traitors "investigating" the lies they created out of thin air. (In full due to paywall.) And as we're now seeing, Durham's "investigation" was even worse and more political than we knew.

Thursday The New York Times published a retrospective and analysis of the “Durham investigation,” the probe Bill Barr stood up to discredit the earlier Trump/Russia probes and which long served as the shining hope of Trump partisans, the vehicle of a promised vengeance that never arrived. Indeed, Durham’s investigation has lasted almost four years, far longer than any of the various probes it purported to scrutinize. The picture the Times story paints is stark if unsurprising: a politicized, instinctively unethical and deeply corrupt effort which managed to embody in almost cartoonish fashion the story it sought to tell about the original Russia investigation. The one thing a criminal investigation is never supposed to be is one that starts knowing the conclusion it wants to arrive at, brings a heavy dose of political motivation and bends rules and cuts corner to get where it wants to go. That caricature describes the Durham probe to a T. The two cases Durham managed to bring to trial were mainly vehicles for airing tendentious conspiracy theories he couldn’t prove and had no real evidence for. The actual cases were laughed out of court with speedy acquittals.

The big “news” from the story is something we’d never known about. In the process of a globetrotting hunt for dirt on Trump’s purported adversaries, they stumbled on some fresh dirt about their boss, Donald Trump. While they were pressing the Italian government to come clean about their role in the launching the “Russia hoax,” the Italians gave Barr and Durham a tip about what were apparently suspicions of grave financial crimes possibly on the part of the President Trump. The allegations seemed serious enough that even Barr and Durham felt they had no choice but to launch a criminal probe into the President.

Durham, to whom Barr chose to assign the case, never brought any charges. The only way this unknown development made its way to the public was in press reports which revealed that the Durham probe had escalated into a full blown criminal probe. This swelled the hearts of Trump partisans who thought, unsurprisingly, that Durham had hit pay dirt on Trump’s enemies. Of course, the actual investigation was into Trump himself, over allegations that had nothing to do with the Russia probe at all.

We’ll likely never know what this tip from the Italians was, what level of substance it contained or whether Durham’s and Barr’s flagrant bias interfered with giving it proper scrutiny. A tip, even a serious one, isn’t evidence of a crime let alone proof of one. Here we’re simply not going to know.

Probably the best way to see the cheap and hucksterish story of the Durham probe is as another way in which an entire political party and a good bit of our justice system has been wrenched over half a dozen years into an effort to protect, exonerate and coddle Donald Trump. It is the counterattack against what Trump and now much of the GOP calls “the Deep State,” the secret war of the generally traditionalist and conservative national security state against American conservatives — an inherently absurd claim which is now a touchstone of American political conversation.

Before the Durham probe and before the Democratic takeover of the House in 2019, there was former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and his rearguard effort to kneecap the Mueller investigation from Congress. What the re-empowered House GOP is now doing with its “weaponization” committee is really just the Durham probe rebooted in the legislative branch. It’s really that simple.

It is worth stepping back and seeing just how much of the political world that we’re currently living in is driven by efforts to get Donald Trump off the hook for things which he was never even properly investigated for.

I mentioned yesterday that the Trump-Russia story has for many taken on something of the dimensions that the Kennedy assassination did for Americans born in the 1940s and 1950s: a deep disjuncture or seeming wrong turn in the country’s history, the causes of which remain murky, unclear and thus irresistible for those trying to make sense of what happened and where we are. The other part of that equation is embodied by the Durham probe, a whole world of whataboutism, conspiracy theories, claims of Deep State plots against Trump, the Trump family and his followers.

Everything, all of this, is about payback for the investigation which never really quite got to the heart of what happened during the 2016 election or indeed the Trump presidency itself. Only now it’s not just about Trump. Everyone is a Trump — conservatives, real Americans, ultra-MAGAs hunted by the American national security state. It’s a central driver in the claims of Big Tech and U.S. intelligence ganging up on conservatives on Twitter. We have the same people who lead the insurrection on Trump’s behalf now back in the saddle and back to payback for 2016.

The Times revelations about the Durham probe are a reminder that many of the most consequential aspects of the story remain secret. What did the Italians share about possible financial crimes tied to the President? Were those leads properly investigated? Most of the investigations into 2016 and subsequent actions which lead to Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 took place during Trump’s presidency, with the inherent thumb on the evidentiary scale that inevitably goes with that.

We’re still mostly in the dark. And perhaps the picture will get darker still with more efforts to kick up dust and mud by Trump’s loyalists.

If Garland names yet another Republican as a special counsel then somebody needs to give him a swift kick in the balls. The Republican track records is horrifying to anybody who believes in actual democracy.

[LFC]

Tell me you're a corrupt, anti-democratic, partisan hack without saying you're a corrupt, anti-democratic, partisan hack.

 

[LFC]

More Comer corruption.

New House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has vowed to use his position to investigate “waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement” in federal COVID loans. But if that’s the case, he might actually find himself looking into his own role in that program—as well as his brother’s.

In 2020, Comer, a critic of government spending, co-sponsored legislation that would essentially automatically forgive COVID Paycheck Protection Program loans of $150,000 or less. After the bill passed, Comer’s brother, Chad, received about $12,000 in PPP loans at the address of a farm he appears to have co-owned with the congressman, listing one employee, according to federal data. Rep. Comer was formerly on the board of the bank that secured his brother’s loan, which has been forgiven in full, plus interest, according to ProPublica data.

Comer’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Kyle Herrig, executive director of the left-leaning Congressional Integrity Project, told The Daily Beast in a statement that Comer had “padded his brother’s pockets” and should start his investigation by “looking in the mirror.”

“While Chairman Comer has made clear that orchestrating political attacks on Joe Biden’s family is his top priority, his own family benefitted from PPP loans while spending lavishly on luxuries like NFL season tickets. If Comer is looking for evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse in pandemic aid programs, he should start by looking in the mirror,” the statement said. “The PPP reporting guidelines he helped relax padded his brother’s pockets. Instead of spending all his time pushing partisan smears, Chair Comer should focus on the priorities the American people care about, like reducing costs.”

[goldenvalley]

Comer may be screwing up here for another reason. The PPC program was during the Trump years, not the Biden ones. So what's he trying to prove?

[LFC]

Jan 31, 2023 22:07:24 GMT goldenvalley said:

Comer may be screwing up here for another reason. The PPC program was during the Trump years, not the Biden ones. So what's he trying to prove?

He'll be digging for any nugget of corruption that might have occurred from the moment Biden stepped into the White House, maybe even since he won the election, while studiously avoiding the mountain of Trumpian corruption and incompetence in the program. It doesn't matter if Biden had anything at all to do with it, of course. Comer will be running around screeching his righteous indignation to any media outlet that will listen, even if he doesn't even find a nugget.

[LFC]

More payback from Qevin for the Democrats not putting up with Reps who like posting murder jokes. And this means the overwhelming majority of Republicans are in on it.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) might finally have the votes he needs to keep his longtime promise and block Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This comes as Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) — who had previously indicated she would not vote to boot Omar — reversed her previous statement, saying she’ll now support McCarthy’s effort to vote Omar out, which could take place today.

Spartz’s change of heart comes after McCarthy agreed to add new language to the resolution that would allow Omar to appeal the decision with the House Ethics Committee.

And we already know that the Republicans neutered the House Ethics Committee practically on Day One.

[LFC]

Right out of the gate they haven't failed to disappoint. Welcome to American fascism.

Don’t Be Fooled!

The House GOP’s hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-corrupt subcommittee to attack the same federal law enforcement apparatus investigating many House Republicans and Donald Trump kicks off its first hearing today. It’ll be a doozy. It’s titled “Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

This is a full-frontal attack on the rule of law masquerading as a probative investigation. Period. End of sentence.

The witness list includes:

PANEL I:

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, Iowa
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Wisconsin
U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland
Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii

PANEL II:

Mr. Thomas Baker, Former FBI Agent
Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law Center
Mr. Elliot Williams, Principal, the Raben Group
Ms. Nicole Parker, Former FBI Agent

You’ll see a lot of news coverage of this hearing that will serve to amplify and legitimize it. House Republicans could run the Barnum & Bailey Circus into a Capitol Hill hearing room and political reporters would still cover it as a hearing because … it’s in a hearing room duh what are you, stupid?

Just remember, the Justice Department under Donald Trump was more politicized (the extent of which we’re still learning!) than at any time since Watergate. And the Trump play, adopted in full by the House GOP, is to accuse your opponents of exactly the wrongdoing you’re committing. It’s an obvious and easy-to-follow playbook. Don’t be fooled.

House GOP Stunt Backfires

Yesterday’s much-hyped House oversight committee hearing targeting Twitter didn’t always go as planned. It turns out the Trump White House did the very thing that conservatives have loudly claimed (without much evidence) that the Deep State did: pressured Twitter to censor unfavorable content. In one notable example, the Trump White House tried to get Twitter to take down this 2019 Chrissy Teigen tweet about Trump:

lol what a pussy ass bitch. tagged everyone but me. an honor, mister president.
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 9, 2019

I double-checked my House Investigation Bingo card and I have to admit I did not have new found respect for Chrissy Teigen anywhere on it.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 9, 2023 16:05:08 GMT LFC said:

Right out of the gate they haven't failed to disappoint. Welcome to American fascism.

Don’t Be Fooled!

The House GOP’s hilarious-if-it-weren’t-so-corrupt subcommittee to attack the same federal law enforcement apparatus investigating many House Republicans and Donald Trump kicks off its first hearing today. It’ll be a doozy. It’s titled “Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

This is a full-frontal attack on the rule of law masquerading as a probative investigation. Period. End of sentence.

The witness list includes:

PANEL I:

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, Iowa
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Wisconsin
U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland
Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii

PANEL II:

Mr. Thomas Baker, Former FBI Agent
Professor Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law Center
Mr. Elliot Williams, Principal, the Raben Group
Ms. Nicole Parker, Former FBI Agent

You’ll see a lot of news coverage of this hearing that will serve to amplify and legitimize it. House Republicans could run the Barnum & Bailey Circus into a Capitol Hill hearing room and political reporters would still cover it as a hearing because … it’s in a hearing room duh what are you, stupid?

Just remember, the Justice Department under Donald Trump was more politicized (the extent of which we’re still learning!) than at any time since Watergate. And the Trump play, adopted in full by the House GOP, is to accuse your opponents of exactly the wrongdoing you’re committing. It’s an obvious and easy-to-follow playbook. Don’t be fooled.

House GOP Stunt Backfires

Yesterday’s much-hyped House oversight committee hearing targeting Twitter didn’t always go as planned. It turns out the Trump White House did the very thing that conservatives have loudly claimed (without much evidence) that the Deep State did: pressured Twitter to censor unfavorable content. In one notable example, the Trump White House tried to get Twitter to take down this 2019 Chrissy Teigen tweet about Trump:

I double-checked my House Investigation Bingo card and I have to admit I did not have new found respect for Chrissy Teigen anywhere on it.

We can laugh, but those folks with inane and insane questions and accusations are going viral on the news media and social media that they value.  They'll get lots of small dollar donations and guest spots on talk shows.  Their preferred media will never show the answers to their questions.  They are sticking it to the elites and owning the libs with this stuff...it's lucrative and ego building.

[LFC]

Good job, Rep. Frost!

Greg Sargent
@theplumlinegs

A very good week for Rep Maxwell Frost:

Got border police to debunk open borders lie

Had big moment mocking GOP Twitter lunacy

Went viral blasting DeSantis drag crackdown

I talked to Frost about his approach and why Dems must wage information warfare:

Here's the unrolled version.

[LFC]

More and more information is coming out about the corrupt, cozy, back scratching deals that Kushner and Trump clearly have with Saudi Arabia. Rep. Comer (R-KY to Screw America) is protecting their corruption. I wonder what he's getting out of the deal. I'm not saying he's been bribed, "I'm just asking the question."

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) relied on the classic political cop out on a Sunday interview when asked if House Republicans will look into former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s financial entanglements with the Saudis.

“I think everything’s on the table,” Comer blurted out when ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked if the GOP-led House Oversight Committee will investigate Kushner’s ties to the Saudis.

But Comer, who’s the chair of the Oversight Committee, then quickly pivoted away from answering that question and started talking about his committee’s overwhelming priority: Hunter Biden.

“Look, we’re investigating Joe Biden. We — we know that Joe Biden said during the presidential campaign that he had no knowledge of his son’s business interests. He wasn’t involved. He didn’t benefit from them. We have evidence that would suggest otherwise. And this is very concerning,” Comer said.

The question comes amid mounting evidence of a cozy relationship between the Trump family and the Saudis, extending from the former president’s time in office to lucrative deals post-presidency. The Washington Post published a revealing article detailing new revelations about Kushner’s business ties to the Saudis and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Just a day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that months later became a private equity firm with $2 billion investment from a sovereign wealth fund led by the Saudi Crown Prince himself, the New York Times reported last year.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 13, 2023 16:32:41 GMT LFC said:

More and more information is coming out about the corrupt, cozy, back scratching deals that Kushner and Trump clearly have with Saudi Arabia. Rep. Comer (R-KY to Screw America) is protecting their corruption. I wonder what he's getting out of the deal. I'm not saying he's been bribed, "I'm just asking the question."

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) relied on the classic political cop out on a Sunday interview when asked if House Republicans will look into former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s financial entanglements with the Saudis.

“I think everything’s on the table,” Comer blurted out when ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked if the GOP-led House Oversight Committee will investigate Kushner’s ties to the Saudis.

But Comer, who’s the chair of the Oversight Committee, then quickly pivoted away from answering that question and started talking about his committee’s overwhelming priority: Hunter Biden.

“Look, we’re investigating Joe Biden. We — we know that Joe Biden said during the presidential campaign that he had no knowledge of his son’s business interests. He wasn’t involved. He didn’t benefit from them. We have evidence that would suggest otherwise. And this is very concerning,” Comer said.

The question comes amid mounting evidence of a cozy relationship between the Trump family and the Saudis, extending from the former president’s time in office to lucrative deals post-presidency. The Washington Post published a revealing article detailing new revelations about Kushner’s business ties to the Saudis and the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Just a day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that months later became a private equity firm with $2 billion investment from a sovereign wealth fund led by the Saudi Crown Prince himself, the New York Times reported last year.

Remember the good ol' days when people thought the Bush family was in bed with the Saudis via the mysterious Carlyle Group? A single American defense company got many contracts to train Saudis on military stuff. And something about Saudis being allowed to leave the US right after 9/11 despite private flying being grounded. House of Bush, House of Saud stuff.  What's so shocking to me about this Kushner thing is that he purports to be a religious Jew, very supportive of Israel, and yet he does business with Muslims whom his father in law denigrated for political purposes.  I guess money is the true religion for him.