**THE POSSIBLE IMPEACHMENT OF HUNTER BIDEN...NOW WAIT A MINUTE...WHAT? THREAD**
The Juggler
Posts: 48,903
Seems as if the stuff they are concerned about happened prior to Joe even being President too, which is odd, to say the least.
Figured it deserved it's own thread none the less.
https://www.salon.com/2023/09/28/an-unmitigated-disaster-gops-first-impeachment-inquiry-panned-by/
"An unmitigated disaster": House GOP's first impeachment inquiry panned by Republicans
The Republican witnesses' testimony appeared to hurt more than help as frustration set in in the chamber
By TATYANA TANDANPOLIE
News FellowPUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 28, 2023 5:43PM (EDT)
The House Oversight Committee's first hearing for the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden got off to a rocky start Thursday as the Republican witnesses' testimony appeared to hurt the committee more than help and frustration set in in the chamber.
In his written testimony to the committee, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor pulled by Republicans as a key witness for the hearing, called into question the evidence Republicans have claimed to gather against Biden, who they allege benefitted from his son, Hunter Biden's, overseas business dealings during his vice presidency.
"I have previously stated that, while I believe that an impeachment inquiry is warranted, I do not believe that the evidence currently meets the standard of a high crime and misdemeanor needed for an article of impeachment," wrote Turley, who has testified at impeachment hearings for former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and, as he noted in the document, substantiated the two articles of impeachment during the latter's inquiry that the House later adopted.
He reiterated this statement during the hearing, testifying to the committee that he, in fact, does not "believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment."
While Turley based his support for the opening of a formal inquiry into the elder Biden on the evidence Republicans touted, outlined in the written testimony, and polls reflecting the public's levels of concern over the president's alleged misconduct, he declared that his appearance before the committee Thursday would not be to discuss any evidence of President Biden's wrongdoing himself, leaving that task to the other witnesses. His testimony, instead, set out to advise the committee on the "historical and legal aspects of this inquiry" by offering a perspective of the "guardrails" for launching them in hopes of prompting the House to "restore important procedural and due process protections" to the process that he believes recent impeachment inquiries have departed from.
Restoring these safeguards "will demand something that is never easy for a majority, namely, voluntarily accepting limits on their own ability to impeach," Turley wrote. "However, the committees carrying out this inquiry could repair what I view as an erosion of best practices in the investigation of presidents."
Despite Turley's citation of polls indicating in his written testimony the public's "deep distrust" of the Justice Department's ability to fairly investigate the president and his son, a national NBC News survey found that 56% of registered voters do not support the committee holding impeachment hearings for President Biden.
An overwhelming majority of those who oppose the hearings are Democrats. 73% of Republicans, meanwhile, support the proceedings. Six in 10 independents oppose the proceedings, while 29% believe Congress should carry them out.
Unlike during the Trump era, NBC News notes, the prospect of Biden's impeachment is less influential for current voters with half of them saying their congresspeople's votes to impeach and remove Biden from office "would make no difference either way" in how they might vote in their local congressional races in 2024. In December 2018, 34% noted their legislators' votes on whether to impeach Trump would not influence their vote.
Just as Turley declined to provide any evidence to the committee, the other Republican witnesses did not either, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., established during the hearing.
Ocasio-Cortez first asked Turley if he would be "presenting any first-hand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States." After the legal scholar responded in the negative, she asked the same of the two remaining Republican witnesses — forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky and Eileen O'Connor, an attorney of federal administrative and tax law. They both responded, "I have not."
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Other Democratic committee members further questioned the absence of evidence from the witnesses with one asking why Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor-turned-personal attorney for Trump, wasn't called to testify given his previous side quest in Ukraine to find information on the elder Biden.
"When I walked into this hearing room, my first question was, 'Where's Rudy Giuliani?'" Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said.
"This is supposed to be an inquiry on the facts against the president for potentially an impeachment, articles of impeachment," Lynch continued. "The one person, the one person, who was an agent of President Donald Trump, was sent to Ukraine to dig up dirt, find some dirt on Joe Biden.
"Just like [Trump] said to the election officials in Georgia, 'find me 11,780 votes.' [He said to Giuliani] 'Find me some dirt on Joe Biden.' And we do not have him here? We are not allowed to ask him questions," Lynch added before reading off a transcript of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In the exchange, Trump is "actually placing Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine with the imprimatur of authority for the president," Lynch said, addressing minority witness, Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor. "Professor Gerhardt, would it not be helpful to have a factual witness here?"
"It seems obvious he should be brought before the committee," Gerhardt responded.
Frustration also consumed the GOP during the impeachment hearing, according to CNN, who were aggravated by their witnesses' testimony countering their narrative and saying that there's no evidence of Biden's crimes.
"Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing. This is an unmitigated disaster," a senior Republican aide told CNN Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona.
When Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., did call a point of order during the hearing to present evidence, however, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., refused to recognize it.
"You're out of order, Mr. Goldman," Comer said, speaking over the representative, who asserted that he should be able to call the point of order, and insisting on giving the floor to Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., to speak.
"I have a point of order. I asked to introduce something by unanimous consent. Is it being introduced?" Goldman asked Comer, who continued to steamroll over him and call for Donalds to speak. "The rules require you to recognize me," Goldman added.
"No," Comer responded flatly before the two briefly continued the back-and-forth about the point of order.
"Mr. Chairman, can I just make a parliamentary inquiry then. Are we not to make points of order on either side during the questioning?" Goldman asked once Comer returned attention to Donalds.
"You keep speaking about no evidence. Why don't you all just listen and learn?" Comer replied.
"I'm trying to introduce evidence!" Goldman explained, seemingly hardening his tone in frustration.
"You've already had your share of evidence," Comer responded before returning focus to Donalds.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry — to be led by the House Judiciary, Oversight and Ways and Means committees — into the president earlier this month following House Republicans' months-long investigation into the president that, notably, failed to kick up any substantial evidence of the elder Biden's wrongdoing with regards to his son's activities.
His decision to launch the inquiry added fuel to the firey tensions in the House GOP with his colleagues split over whether an impeachment inquiry into the president — alongside the far-right members' intense focus on Hunter Biden's personal legal woes — is necessary.
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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I was thinking that very same thing recently.
It also occurs to me that at one time (not so long ago) most politicians in Washington took their jobs at least somewhat (if not very) seriously. Today, we have a large number of Republicans in office who treat the whole thing like some kind of adolescent game. It's embarrassing to think about how people in other countries must look at us today.
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On Fox News, GOP impeachment leaders spread false claims with impunity
The Republican push to impeach President Biden formally began on Thursday with a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill. By most objective accounts, it was not a huge success for the GOP, featuring witnesses who by their own admission couldn’t provide any evidence incriminating Biden and who were loath to state that such evidence existed.But in the creaky machine that is modern American politics, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is how the impeachment inquiry is perceived, and in that critical battle, the actual machinations in the hearing room are unimportant. What’s important are the snippets excerpted from the hearing and the extent to which flaws in either side’s case are smoothed over for mass consumption.
By that measure, the hearing was just dandy. Anyone tuning in to Sean Hannity’s prime time Fox News program, for example, learned that Republicans executed a precision strike on the sitting president, offering up evidence that only a buffoon or a hack could deny. This presentation was made easier by Hannity’s playing host to the three Republicans leading the impeachment push — each of whom offered false, baseless or debunked claims to which the Fox News host offered absolutely no pushback.
The assiduously policed right-wing narrative about the president was left unharmed.
Hannity’s show began the way all serious news programs do, with members in the live studio audience chanting “U-S-A!” as the host welcomed them. Hannity then launched into his monologue, his usual articulation of Republican genius and Democratic stupidity with elements of the hearing slotted into the appropriate places.
Someone inclined to be skeptical of Hannity’s daily presentations would very quickly wonder how his audience could continuously suspend disbelief. On Thursday, for example, Hannity alleged illegalities and unethical behavior by Biden that would make a New Jersey senator blush, arguing that the evidence of these actions was unassailable. Yet, he suggested, Democrats are so blinkered or craven that they simply ignore all of this, for days and months on end. And that’s the answer: Democrats would have to be utterly soulless and desperate for power to let this purported proof go unaddressed, so that’s the assumption about Democrats that carries the day.
“In our hyperpartisan world,” he said at one point, “Democrats still try almost anything to defend their president.” And then, a few minutes later, he credulously hosted Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jason Smith (R-Mo.) to make false claims in an effort to backstop the failures of their impeachment hearing.
Jordan went first. He presented the same argument that he did in his opening remarks on Thursday, remarks that included explicit misrepresentations and falsehoods, as we documented shortly afterward. The simplest demonstration of Jordan’s dishonesty centers on his suggestion that Joe Biden’s son Hunter was asked by the Ukrainian energy company on whose board he sat to get rid of a Ukrainian investigator, which contradicts the available evidence, and that Joe Biden then traveled to Ukraine to begin a push to oust the investigator, which is flatly untrue. Among other things, the trip had been announced weeks before the purported pressure on Hunter.
Jordan also mixed in one of the myriad mini-bombshells that the right has briefly amplified over the past six months: a letter sent from board members of the company (including Hunter Biden) to the Ukrainian prosecutor in July 2016, asking that he halt investigations into the company. But this was the new prosecutor, the one brought on board after the first one was ousted for failing to address corruption thanks to American and international pressure. The letter came after the new prosecutor announced a robust probe into the company — an investigation that was not underway when Joe Biden joined the effort to remove the old prosecutor.
In any sane world, this would be evidence that the removal of the old prosecutor was, as Hunter Biden’s former business partner testified, bad for the company, since it meant there might be (and was) a prosecutor that actually looked into its behavior. But “Hunter Biden objects to investigation” is a central component of Jordan’s argument, timeline and identity of prosecutor notwithstanding.
“If that’s not a corrupt influence-peddling scheme,” he said, “I don’t know what is.” So it would seem.
Then it was Comer’s turn. He’s an old hand at exaggerating claims about Biden on Hannity, and he didn’t disappoint.
“We have bank wires that show the Bidens took $20 million from foreign nationals in at least five different countries,” he began, which isn’t true. At the hearing, he offered a more accurate assessment, that “to date, we’ve shown that the Biden family and their companies received more than $15 million” with other partners receiving more. A subtle distinction, but a telling one: His “$20 million” formulation has been part of his patter for months and he slips right back into it.
The rest of his argument was similarly familiar, including his presentation that Hunter Biden used “shell companies,” which “shows money laundering” — inflammatory language that is in the first case misleading and in the latter unsubstantiated.
Comer also elevated one of the new arguments that emerged in the hearing.
“[Rep.] Byron Donalds showed that text message today from Jim Biden” — Joe Biden’s brother — “to Hunter Biden when Hunter was going to rehab again,” Comer said. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll work with your dad. We’ll finish those deals.’”
That isn’t what the message said. It was a response from James Biden to Hunter’s worries that he couldn’t “pay alimony [without] Dad or tuitions or for food and gas.” This was in a period when Hunter’s uncle was trying to get him into rehab, a stint that proved unsuccessful, as Hunter Biden writes in his memoir. James Biden’s response to the text assures Hunter that “[t]his can work, you need a safe harbor” — and that he would work with Hunter’s dad.
“We can develope a plan together,” James Biden wrote. “It can work.” He did not say, “We’ll finish those deals.” But, of course, Hannity did not correct Comer.
Finally, Jason Smith came up to the plate. He’s newer to this whole thing and mostly repeated what Comer said. He did point to a document showing that Joe Biden’s name was removed from a search warrant targeting potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
“There was obstruction in investigating President Joe Biden,” Smith said — but that email was sent in August 2020, when Joe Biden was a private citizen and the Justice Department was under the purview of William P. Barr, appointed by then-President Donald Trump.
If you were watching Hannity’s show, though, none of this context and correction was presented. You saw Hannity spend 10 minutes or so railing against the imperviousness of the evidence against Biden and the nefariousness of anyone who denied that fact. You heard three elected Republican leaders making explicit claims about Biden without hearing any of the qualifications those claims demand. And then you heard Hannity praise their work and the studio audience applaud before going to commercial.
The point of failure here isn’t really Hannity, though. It’s that elected officials can make the same false claims over and over, misrepresent what they know multiple times in the span of hours and face no pushback. It’s that the bubble surrounding all of this is so impermeable that it forms a closed terrarium, a self-sustaining environment that resists any outside intervention.
But what else can we do but sit here outside of it, attempting to convey reality like we’re dropping leaflets into North Korea?
On Fox News, GOP impeachment leaders spread false claims with impunity - The Washington Post
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