After Rep. James Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley released an FBI document containing corruption allegations debunked by Biden, Rep. Jamie Raskin dismantled the Republicans.
Raskin said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA:
As the antics and scams continue to mount, it is now clear that President Comer threatened to despise FBI Director Wray for a document that Senator Grassley already had in his possession and President Comer already had seen. Now President Comer and Senator Grassley are spreading these unverified claims without the critical context. provided by the FBI in a briefing to President Comer and to myself because, as Senator Grassley has acknowledged, they don’t care about precision of these allegations, obviously just their political utility.
This FBI Document published by Republicans records the unverified, second-hand, years-old claims relayed by a confidential human source who said he could not provide “another opinion as to the veracity” of the claims. Even Senator Johnson acknowledged that these claims may have been fabricated out of thin air.
The version of the document published by the Republicans clearly indicates that the source of the information is the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky. As I noted in a letter to President Comer last month, Mr. Zlochevsky was at the center of a pressure campaign led by Rudy Giuliani in 2019 and 2020 on behalf of former President Trumpduring which Mr Zlochevsky was interviewed and directly denied these allegations. He stated unequivocally that no one at Burisma had “contact” with the former vice president at the time. Biden or his representatives while Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board, and he denied that former Vice President Biden or his staff had “in any way” assisted Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma.
Additionally, Lev Parnas, a central participant and co-conspirator in Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine and to spread disinformation against Joe Biden, wrote to Congress and offered to testify under oath that, based on his first-hand knowledge, there has “never been any factual evidence” to support these corruption allegations, “only conspiracy theories”, which have been “proven false repeatedly”. He called on Chairman Comer to face the reality that there is no evidence for these claims and to quash the Committee’s “wild goose chase.”
Publish this document independently of explanatory context is another obviously desperate attempt by Committee Republicans to revive the aging and debunked conspiracy theories framed by Giuliani and distract from their continued failure to produce real evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the president, even at the price of endanger the safety of FBI sources.
Republicans are desperate
The clock is turning. The 2024 presidential election is fast approaching and efforts to find a scandal to hang on to President Biden have been futile. As ranking member Raskin pointed out, Republicans are desperate. Their hearings on Joe Biden and the relentless push of Hunter Biden conspiracy theories got them nowhere. The non-conservative press sees through what the Republicans are doing, and there are growing signs that even the conservative media are starting to get bored of being fed a relentless dose of conspiracy theories without any evidence.
A conspiracy junk diet, the truth is out there, fluff doesn’t cut it anymore, so Grassley and Comey got desperate and released a document that’s secondhand hearsay that’s already been deemed not credible by THE Asset DOJ.
The Republicans continue to show that they have nothing. Comer and Grassley hope that if they keep pushing the conspiracies hard enough and long enough, they’ll figure it out.
That hasn’t happened yet, and with the election season set to kick off in a few months, Republicans in Congress are running out of time and facing the reality that their Biden scandals are a failure.
Jason is the editor. He is also a member of the White House press pool and a congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason holds a bachelor’s degree in political science. His graduate studies focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association
