The man leading the Republican charge for an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden has spent “eight months of abject failure” in trying to prove the US president guilty of wrongdoing, a watchdog report says.
James Comer, the ambitious chairman of the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, has repeatedly overhyped allegations of bribery and corruption against Biden without once producing hard evidence, according to the Congressional Integrity Project.
The lack of a case underlines the huge political risks facing House Republicans when they return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Some are threatening to force a government shutdown unless an impeachment inquiry is opened despite objections from wary Republican colleagues in the Senate.
Comer has been leading an aggressive investigation into unsubstantiated claims that Biden was involved in his son Hunter’s foreign business affairs during his time as vice-president. A CNN/SSRS poll this week found that 61% of Americans believe that Biden did play such a role, including 42% who think he acted illegally. But establishing the link between father and son has proved an elusive holy grail.
“After months of political stunts, dozens of hearings, transcribed interviews, and memos, and despite hours on Fox peddling conspiracy theories, Comer and his Maga crew have failed to find a single shred of evidence linking President Biden to any of their lurid accusations,” says the report by the Congressional Integrity Project, which monitors the Republican investigations. “In fact, Republicans have been forced to walk back claim after claim.”
The report offers an anatomy of a fake scandal, detailing a series of exaggerated assertions that have shriveled under scrutiny. They include Comer saying at his first press conference that he had evidence of “federal crimes committed”, relentlessly invoking “deep state” conspiracy theories and claiming that his whistleblowers “fear for their lives”.
For months, the report says, Comer talked to the media about four individuals he claimed were “whistleblowers”, a term increasingly hijacked by the right. It adds: “Problem is – they weren’t whistleblowers and there were only two people.”
Comer was eventually factchecked by his own colleague on the House oversight committee. Democrat Jamie Raskin wrote to him: “The two individuals your staff specifically identified as the individuals they understood to have been referenced during your March 6 Fox News interview, are not whistleblowers … Your repeated statements about ‘four people’ suggest that either you have intentionally misrepresented the Committee’s investigative progress to your conservative audience or that key investigative steps have been deliberately withheld from Committee Democrats.”
In early May, Comer and Senator Chuck Grassley, investigating Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, published an open letter to the FBI announcing subpoenas for an unclassified document supposedly describing an alleged “criminal scheme involving then-Vice-President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions”.
But when Comer and Grassley obtained the document, form FD-1023, and publicly released a redacted version – against the advice of intelligence officials who feared it would “unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source” – it turned out to be an uncorroborated FBI tip.
“Worse still,” says the Congressional Integrity Project’s report, “the owner of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma had already rebutted the uncorroborated bribery allegations back in 2019.”
Also in May, Comer published a bank memo attacking Biden for his alleged foreign business ties but even the conservative Fox News network was unimpressed. Host Steve Doocy challenged Comer: “That’s just your suggestion. You don’t actually have any facts to that point. You’ve got some circumstantial evidence. And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is that – there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”
In June, during a series of interviews with rightwing media, Comer claimed that the supposed bribery allegations against Biden have nothing to do with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor turned lawyer for ex-president Donald Trump.
The report points out: “The only problem with Comer’s vehement statements? They are not true. Rudy Giuliani himself has taken credit for first raising the allegations. Giuliani has said during several Newsmax TV appearances that he alerted the justice department to the allegation.”
Also in June, Comer and Grassley began touting potential audio tapes supposedly proving that Biden accepted a $5m bribe from a Ukrainian energy company during the Barack Obama administration. But Comer later admitted, “We don’t know if they are legit or not,” during a Newsmax interview just five days later.
In July, after weeks of hype from Comer about “bombshell testimony”, a business associate of Hunter Biden named Devon Archer appeared before the House oversight committee. But Archer failed to offer any evidence of a conflict of interest between Joe Biden and his son’s business ventures.
Comer made much of a portion of testimony by Archer suggesting that Biden joined Hunter on speakerphone while talking with business associates up to 20 times. “The reality, however, was that Archer’s testimony referred to approximately 20 instances over the span of a decade in which Hunter indicated Joe Biden was merely present; Archer did not testify that President Biden was directly involved in business discussions beyond ‘the brand’ – only that he held casual conversations about ‘the weather’ and ‘fishing’.”
Comer himself was not even present for the testimony. One anonymous Republican source was quoted as saying: “It was like following a general into battle, but the general decided to stay home instead of fight.”
In early August, Comer released a memo that attacked Biden for supposedly receiving bribes from foreign countries. It was widely derided by factcheckers. The Politico website reported: “But the memo, the third Comer has released so far this year, also doesn’t show a direct payment to Joe Biden.”
The headline-grabbing pursuit of Biden has boosted Comer’s profile in the Republican party and proved beneficial in fundraising terms. He brought in $1m in the first six months of 2023, including $400,000 in small-dollar donations, compared with just $15,000 from small-dollar donors in the whole of 2021 and 2022.
News that prosecutors pursuing Hunter Biden on a gun possession charge intend to seek a grand jury indictment by the end of September is likely to give fresh impetus to Republicans seeking an impeachment inquiry, even though the case refers to his private conduct and is not connected to the president.
Such an inquiry could also backfire on far-right Republicans who are vowing to shut down the government unless they get their way. No one is pushing harder for it than Trump, who wrote on social media: “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION.”
Kyle Herrig, the Congressional Integrity Project’s executive director, argues Trump’s myriad legal troubles are a motivating factor for Comer and allies ahead of next year’s presidential election.
“Let’s be clear why Republicans are doing this in the first place,” Herrig said. “Donald Trump has been indicted four times and they think using the machinations of government to conduct their partisan, stunt-filled investigations will convince the American people that Joe Biden is somehow corrupt like Trump.
“The problem is that facts are facts and we have the fact that Donald Trump is corrupt and has likely committed numerous crimes. They don’t have a single shred of evidence connecting Joe Biden to any wrongdoing.”
Comer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
