Maybe Republicans Are Just Bad at Investigating - WhoWhatWhy Maybe Republicans Are Just Bad at Investigating - WhoWhatWhy

Elise Stefanik, Hunter Biden, detective
Elise Stefanik, crime-solving goofball. Photo credit: DonkeyHotey / WhoWhatWhy (CC BY-SA 2.0) See complete attribution below.

If you listen to Republicans and follow the right-wing media, you get the impression that Democratic leaders are criminals who are about to be exposed. So why does that never happen?

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If you watch Fox “News” (or adjacent propaganda outlets) and listen to any number of Republicans, it is painfully obvious that prominent Democrats have been engaging in a multiyear crime spree in plain sight. And we are not talking about petty offenses but rather some pretty serious stuff: accepting bribes, high-level corruption, witch hunts, government weaponization, mishandling classified documents (actually, that one is apparently OK now), and possibly being involved in an international network of blood-drinking pedophiles.

Well, maybe. We’ll keep an open mind for now.

For example, it is conceivable that Joe Biden accepted $10 million from some Ukrainian. And, maybe, Hillary Clinton did all the things. Admittedly, that entire “Democrats are grooming kids in pizza restaurants and drinking their blood” thing is more difficult to swallow, but you never know what they are into when they are not ruining America.

Finally, there’s Hunter Biden. That guy is a screwup, and we’re willing to believe just about any accusation leveled against him. That being said, he isn’t a Democratic official and therefore doesn’t really belong on this list, but Republicans are trying sooo hard, which is why we included him as well.

Now, imagine that you are part of a group of god-fearing patriots who are not only aware of all of these crimes being committed, but also have nearly unlimited resources to investigate them.

That would be pretty neat, right?

Surely, with million-dollar budgets, subpoena power, loads of amenable judges you installed, and control of the Department of Justice (DOJ) for four years, you could round up these rogues and put them away for good. You know, tough on crime, law and order and such — especially if a central theme of your party’s platform is to lock one of them up. After all, your supporters expect you to put an end to all that criming.

That just leaves one question: Why aren’t any of these Democrats and their allies in prison?

There really are only two possible answers. The first is that most of these allegations are complete BS (probably not the Hunter Biden stuff, though. That guy is a grifter). The second is that Republicans are epically bad at investigating.

There isn’t a day without a Republican trotting out on Fox News to proclaim that they have ironclad evidence that will nail the Bidens for good.

Take Hillary Clinton, aka the most investigated woman in history.

It’s not only that she is walking free after allegedly having committed every crime from mishandling classified documents (which, just to reiterate, is totally fine now) and other email-related offenses, to killing people, and something something Benghazi, but she hasn’t even been indicted.

Take that last one. There were six GOP-led Benghazi investigations that took years and cost millions, and Clinton testified for hours under oath. And yet, Republicans couldn’t even get her for perjury?

Donald Trump (to whom we’ll get in a minute) couldn’t testify under oath for five minutes without perjuring himself.

So, what happened there?

It certainly doesn’t square with the right-wing rhetoric that Clinton personally killed a bunch of covert operatives in Benghazi or whatever else she kept getting accused of.

Of course, the GOP didn’t want to lock up just Clinton. The list of Democrats accused of different crimes is very long.

“Each day it becomes clearer that Joe Biden and the Biden Crime Family are corrupt and significant threats to national security,” tweeted Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the fourth-ranking House Republican. “Our Republican House Majority will hold them accountable.”

Well, where is that accountability?

There isn’t a day without a Republican trotting out on Fox News to proclaim that they have ironclad evidence that will nail the Bidens for good.

Then what are they waiting for? Where are the indictments?

Yes, we know that it’s all the fault of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — supposedly because of all of that well-known left-wing bias in law enforcement…

Let’s not forget, however, that the FBI played a big role in getting Trump into the White House in the first place. Tough to see a pro-Hillary bias there.

Speaking of, the bureau is also a great example of what happens when Republicans try to “investigate the investigators.”

If there is this rampant corruption within the ranks of the FBI (again, we are not discounting that possibility at all), then shouldn’t all those probes the GOP has launched have resulted in some accountability?

Nope.

Earlier this year, special counsel John Durham wrapped up a four-year investigation into how in the world the FBI could possibly have thought that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia.

To the GOP and right-wing talking heads, that must have been corruption. It certainly couldn’t have been related to the many connections between Russia and the campaign that a bipartisan 1,000-page Senate report had detailed. Essentially, the only reason that there was no “collusion” was that Russia’s election interference was done on behalf of Trump but not at his behest.

So, what was the result of all that investigating of the investigators? Surely, heads rolled at the FBI and people went to jail, right?

Nope. After four years and millions of dollars, Durham lost the two criminal cases he brought, and one other official admitted to altering a document.

What a resounding success.

Of course, if you listen to Republicans and the right-wing media, the Durham report was a complete exoneration of Trump and exposed corruption in the FBI and the “Russia hoax.”

If you want to know what a real special counsel report looks like, look no further than the indictment of Trump earlier this month for violating the Espionage Act.

In meticulous detail and with all the receipts, special counsel Jack Smith makes the case against the former president.

So why can’t Republicans muster the same effort to get Clinton, Joe Biden and any number of other Democrats, and all those blood-drinking pedophiles for their alleged crimes?

And that brings us back to our two possibilities from earlier: Either the GOP is comically inept when it comes to investigating Democrats, or it’s all just a performance for gullible voters and audiences.

Somebody should look into that… we just don’t recommend that it’s a Republican.


The cartoon above was created by DonkeyHotey for WhoWhatWhy from these images: Elise Stefanik caricature (DonkeyHotey / Flickr – CC BY 2.0), Capitol (UpstateNYer / Wikimedia – CC BY-SA 3.0), and hat (Tumisu / Pixabay). And a hat tip to Tumisu / Pixabay for the concept.

Authors

  • Klaus Marre

    Klaus Marre is a senior editor for Politics and director of the Mentor Apprentice Program at WhoWhatWhy. Follow him on Bluesky @unravelingpolitics.bsky.social.

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  • DonkeyHotey

    DonkeyHotey creates art to illustrate news articles and opinion pieces. His current work is a combination of caricature, photo collage, and photo manipulation.

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