When Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., first took over as chair of the House Oversight Committee in January, he promised to “root out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government and hold President [Joe] Biden accountable.” Since then, he has mostly focused on the last of those points, promising repeatedly to be this close to proving that Biden and his family have secretly enriched themselves during his time in government.
Comer and his fellow Republicans held a press conference on Wednesday to release the results of their first four months of work. They threw around plenty of insinuations and accusations, but offered little in the way of evidence to back up their claims. While the briefing aimed to lend a patina of seriousness to the probes, it instead shone a spotlight on the farce the Oversight Committee is staging.
While the briefing aimed to lend a patina of seriousness to the probes, it instead shone a spotlight on the farce the Oversight Committee is staging.
Much of the event followed the contours of a memo that Comer released on Wednesday morning. The authors — the committee’s Republican staff — portrayed the memo as an update for Republican committee members on the “investigation of the President’s role in his family members’ and business associates’ foreign and domestic business practice.” But partway through reading it, I realized that the intended audience wasn’t necessarily Comer’s fellow members of Congress. Instead, it makes much more sense to read it as cover against any potential legal challenges to subpoenas the Oversight Committee may issue down the line.
Last month, Comer was one of several House committee chairs, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, that sought testimony about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump. It wasn’t hard to determine that Comer’s motives were at best merely political. At worst, it was an attempt to interfere with the…
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