House Republicans on Wednesday sent a criminal referral to DOJ asking the department to charge President Joe Biden's son and brother with lying to Congress. It is a ploy that is transparent as it is pathetic.
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You’ve got to hand it to House Republicans; they are certainly relentless in their efforts to pin some sort of crime (or something that they can sell to their voters as a crime) on President Joe Biden. So far, they have come up empty… which you wouldn’t know if you listen to GOP lawmakers talk about “the Biden crime family.”
That term is somewhat deceptive. While their investigations do involve the Biden family, they have not actually uncovered any crimes.
But certainly not for want of trying.
And even “family” is a bit misleading because that largely only refers to the president’s son Hunter and, sometimes, his brother James. And, once again, the “investigators” have not been able to demonstrate that either of them were involved in criminal wrongdoing.
Their probes are going so poorly that the appetite for impeaching the president is waning among House Republicans.
However, three GOP committee chairmen are still bravely plugging along.
On Wednesday, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) recommended to the Department of Justice (DOJ) that Hunter and James Biden should be charged with making false statements to Congress.
You can’t fault them for trying, but this is really getting a bit sad.
“Our investigation has revealed President Biden knew about, participated in, and benefitted from his family cashing in on the Biden name around the world,” said Comer, referring to things that are not illegal. “Despite this record of evidence, President Biden continues to lie to the American people about his involvement in these influence peddling schemes.”
If that last part were true, it would also not be a crime or an impeachable offense — which is good news for Republicans because otherwise Donald Trump would have been impeached 30,000 times.
Jordan charged that the president’s family members “lied to cover up President Biden’s involvement in their family’s international influence peddling schemes that have generated millions of dollars.”
He added (and note the use of “Biden family” and “the Bidens”) that the “criminal referrals are a reflection of criminal wrongdoing by the Biden family, and the Department of Justice must take steps to hold the Bidens accountable.”
It is curious that the GOP lawmakers want DOJ to get involved. After all, they keep claiming that President Biden has “weaponized” that department to do his bidding… which apparently seems to include charging his own son with tax fraud and a weapons charge.
However, this gets to the heart of the matter… and the real purpose of this stunt.
What these Republicans want to accomplish is to pretend that they are supplying DOJ with ironclad evidence against the president’s family members and then have the department not act on the information.
Smith already got that ball rolling Wednesday.
“President Biden claims no one is above the law,” he said. “We will soon see his Department of Justice put that principle to the test.”
They really couldn’t be more transparent.
The game plan is clearly to claim that the president is shielding his son and brother from prosecution (and, just to re-emphasize, Hunter is being tried right now on that gun charge and will face a tax fraud charge in September) and then to accuse him of collusion or some other nonsense on Fox News to score points with voters.
