In the wake of the wondrous Nancy Pelosi’s press conference this morning, the future of American democracy was quickly put on display — Republicans with a tiny majority in the House will bypass governing and concentrate on pure, obvious bullshit.
BS sprouted by horribly-lying hypocrisy:
House Republicans are getting to work on the issues that mat—HUNTER BIDEN pic.twitter.com/aO0HtWXpSR
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) November 17, 2022
BS via so-called ‘whistleblowers‘ — which Charles P. Pierce at Esquire this afternoon takes to task: ‘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.‘
In turn, led to an examination of the fine media-enhancing points:
The entire GOP investigation into "Hunter Biden" is based on a bunch of bullshit. https://t.co/wCj3AeJbFO
Hey @Olivia_Beavers: want to call out Comer for lying through you? pic.twitter.com/gT9MD6xvfI
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) November 17, 2022
Marcy Wheeler also this afternoon at enptywheel with an excellent look at what matters:
There is no functioning democracy in which the opposition party’s first act after winning a majority should be investigating the private citizen son of the President for actions taken three to six years earlier, particularly not as a four year criminal investigation into Hunter Biden — still overseen by a Trump appointee — continues.
There is no sane argument for doing so. Sure, foreign countries paid Hunter lots of money as a means to access his father. But according to an October leak from FBI agents pressuring to charge the President’s son (one that Comer pitched on Fox News), which claimed there was enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden for tax and weapons charges but which made no mention of foreign influence peddling charges, that foreign influence peddling apparently doesn’t amount to a crime. Nothing foreign countries did with Hunter Biden is different from what Turkey did with Mike Flynn, Ukraine did with Paul Manafort, Israel did with George Papadopoulos, and multiple countries did with Elliot Broidy. Jim Jordan and James Comer not only had no problem with that foreign influence peddling, they attacked the FBI for investigating them.
If James Comer and Jim Jordan really cared about foreign influence peddling, they would care that, since leaving the White House, the Trump family has entered into more than $3.6 billion of deals with Saudi Arabia ($2 billion to Jared’s investment fund, a $1.6 billion real estate development in Oman announced the day before Trump’s re-election bid, and a golf deal of still-undisclosed value; Judd Legum has a good post summarizing what we know about this relationship). Given that the Oversight panel under Carolyn Maloney already launched an investigation into Jared’s fund — like Hunter Biden’s funding, notable because of the obvious inexperience of the recipient — Comer could treat himself and American taxpayers with respect by more generally investigating the adequacy of protection against foreign influence, made more acute in the wake of the opinion in the Steve Wynn case that guts DOJ’s ability to enforce FARA.
…
This Hunter Biden obsession has been allowed to continue already for three years not just because it has been Fox’s non-stop programming choice to distract from more important matters, but because journalists who consider themselves straight journalists, not Fox propagandists, choose not to call out the rank hypocrisy and waste of it all.
For any self-respecting journalist, the story going forward should be about how stupid and hypocritical all this is, what a waste of government resources.
We’re about to find out how few self-respecting journalists there are in DC.
Maybe not that many. They’ve had a tough time with the truth for a long, long while.
And if not for the idiotic?
Yet with Nancy Smash around to keep order, once again here we are…
(Illustration out front: Edvard Munch‘s ‘The Scream,’ lithograph version, found here.)