House Oversight Chair James Comer wants to know why United States Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss hasn’t indicted President Joe Biden’s son. Actually, make that sons.
While Comer, like most Republicans, is absolutely panting to see Hunter Biden indicted on the kinds of charges that members of Congress don’t usually concern themselves with when they involve people who are in no way members of the government, The Daily Beast reports that Comer went further in a recent appearance on Lou Dobbs' podcast. In that interview, Comer complained that Weiss, a Trump appointee, hadn’t previously indicted Beau Biden, the president’s older son who died of brain cancer in 2015.
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“This U.S. attorney had had an opportunity to go after the Bidens years ago,” Comer said. “In fact, it was Beau Biden, the president’s other son, that was involved in some campaign donations from a person that got indicted, as well as Joe Biden was involved in some of these campaign donations when he was a senator, and then when he ran for president against Obama.”
Comer added: “But nothing ever happened. So I don’t know much about this U.S. attorney other than he’s had an opportunity to investigate the Bidens before and he chose not to. We all know that he’s just been silent for a long time.”
Comer was referring to illegal campaign contributions for which no public figure was charged—because a two-year investigation concluded they did not know the contributions were illegal. Christopher Tigani, the person who made the illegal contributions by using straw donors and reimbursing them, pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2011 after wearing a wire for the FBI to try to get evidence implicating people close to Joe Biden and failing to get usable evidence.
Beau Biden, then the Delaware attorney general, recused himself from a state investigation into the recipients, naming a special prosecutor. Apparently Comer thinks Weiss should have used his role in the U.S. attorney’s office (where he worked for years prior to Trump nominating him for the top job) to go after Beau Biden for receiving those contributions an investigation concluded he didn’t know were problematic—because his father might someday become president.
It’s not like every other recipient of Tigani’s money was indicted and Joe and Beau Biden got off. That would look suspicious. But in this case, they were two of 19 lawmakers who the state investigation concluded hadn’t known that Tigani was using straw donors. Law enforcement did not sleep on this case. Both federal and state investigations were held.
Comer can be sure his listeners won’t know any of that, though. At least Comer isn’t suggesting Weiss exhume Beau Biden and indict his body, although if Hunter wasn’t on the scene as a Republican target, he might be tempted. But going after a man who has been dead for nearly eight years, the beloved son the president continues to publicly mourn, on the basis of him having been cleared in an investigation shows where Comer is coming from.
Comer has previously claimed that he just wants to know if the president did anything wrong, but to what he claims is that end, he’s hauled former Twitter executives in to explain, basically, why they removed nonconsensual nude photos of Hunter Biden from Twitter in the run-up to the 2020 election—photos that were being posted by Republican operatives as part of a smear campaign, photos that violated Twitter’s policies even if no one prominent was involved. During Comer’s hearing on that subject, Democrats exposed how the Trump White House actively lobbied Twitter to take down tweets it didn’t like and how Twitter changed policies to avoid having to take action against Trump’s own tweets. But that won’t stop Comer from trying to make the removal of Hunter’s dick pics a major issue in the House. His goal is not finding out if the president has done anything wrong. His goal is finding any way to make the president’s job and his personal life more difficult, and if that means suggesting his dead son should have been indicted in a matter that was fully investigated long ago, well, that’s what Comer will do. Because that’s how disgusting of a human being he is.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has thrown his hat into the ring! Gallego will try to take progressive-turned-bizarre-centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat in 2024. Today on The Brief, Markos and Rep. Gallego talk about the state of the country and his campaign, and what Americans want from the officials they elect to office.
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