The chairman of the House Oversight Committee didn’t bother spending a single minute listening to testimony from a former business partner of Hunter Biden who he’d hyped up as a star witness who could prove many of the salacious allegations he and his Republican colleagues have levelled at the 46th president.
According to a transcript of the closed-door interview that committee members and staff conducted with Devon Archer, the convicted fraudster who once had a business relationship with President Biden’s youngest and only surviving son, Mr Comer was not among the Republican committee members who participated in the session.
Only two Republican members, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan and Arizona Representative Andy Biggs, deigned to make themselves available for the interview with Archer, who will soon begin a year-and-a-day prison sentence stemming from a 2019 conviction for attempting to defraud a Native American tribe.
Yet Mr Comer had no problem allowing himself to be portrayed as having led the session, which House Republicans had suggested would provide them with proof that President Joe Biden had engaged in the unlawful activities they claim he is guilty of despite lacking any proof for the allegations.
On Monday, Mr Comer appeared on Newsmax to discuss the interview, and he did not make clear that he didn’t attend when pressed on what had happened by host Greg Kelly.
When Kelly stated that Mr Comer had been “in the room” and asked if Democrats were “recognising that this is beyond their control now,” the Kentucky Republican replied: “The walls are closing in on the Bidens”.
He did not correct Kelly’s assertion that he’d participated in the interview.
The Independent has requested comment from Mr Comer.
According to The Daily Beast, the Oversight Committee chairman had spent the weekend before the interview at a family barbeque and playing golf.
And while Congress is on recess until the end of August, his committee arranged the interview with Archer, who Mr Comer subpoenaed to testify in June.
Archer repeatedly denied that President Biden spoke with any of his son’s business partners, but he did tell the panel that the president frequently was put on speakerphone by his son so he could sell the “illusion” of access to his father.
