Within a day of Vice President Joe Biden's rise from the political dead, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin re-upped efforts to fan the flames of GOP-driven conspiracy theories about Biden.
As chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Johnson has both penned a "Dear Colleague" letter and told his colleagues on the panel that he plans to schedule a vote on subpoenaing documents supposedly related to Hunter Biden's work on the board of the Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma. Johnson claims the documents relate to Hunter Biden using his position on the board to influence the State Department—of course, he’s provided zero evidence of that.
It's idiotic really—yet another GOP effort to embroil a potential Democratic front-runner in scandal in order to distract voters from Trump's total incompetence and near singular focus on using the federal government to line his own pockets. As Lawfare editor and national security expert Susan Hennessey tweeted Monday, "Just embarrassing for media to be covering this as a serious story at this point."
It should also be embarrassing, not to mention treasonous, for the GOP to resurrect this farce. None other than the GOP chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, warned his colleagues in December that fueling unfounded conspiracy theories about Biden's corruption could play directly into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"In a Dec. 5 meeting, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told the leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees—Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, respectively—that their probe targeting Biden could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting," wrote Politico.
But hey, if dismantling the republic is the price that has to be paid to get Trump reelected, Johnson's all in—party over country, always.
