During a news conference Wednesday morning, House Republican leaders escalated their push to impeach President Biden. That effort has proved to be a pastiche of superficial allegations, relying heavily on investigatory work that predates the formal impeachment inquiry and that primarily implicates Joe Biden’s son Hunter in questionable activity. But if you tell your fervently anti-Biden base of support that you’re going to try to impeach the guy, you have to try to impeach him.
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The intent of the news conference was to show progress; they unveiled a logo for the probe and pledged a new website containing the evidence they had accumulated to date. The most noteworthy element of the news conference, though, was a revelation about how dishonest they were willing to be to insinuate wrongdoing by the president.
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Last month, the House Oversight Committee and its chairman, James Comer (R-Ky.), made public two checks that had been written to Joe Biden by his sister-in-law, Sara Biden. Sara is married to the president’s brother James, who partnered on business deals with Hunter.
The two checks, one from 2017 and one from 2018, were identified on the subject line as “loan repayments.” Documents shared with The Washington Post reinforce the idea that the money was meant to repay loans from Joe Biden, then a private citizen. On July 28, 2017, Joe Biden wired $40,000 to the account of James and Sara Biden; Sara Biden wrote a check repaying that amount on Sept. 3. Then on Jan. 12, 2018, Joe Biden wired $200,000; on March 1, that loan was repaid.
Comer and his committee received these documents at the same time but staggered making them public, presumably in part to get more than one news cycle out of the discovery (which followed subpoenas the committee had issued). Comer cast doubt on the idea that the checks were repayments of loans, demanding Biden prove they were and scoffing at the idea that it was significant that the checks were identified as “loan repayment.” (His suggestion, it seems, is that those words were part of a years-long coverup by Sara Biden.) Reporters quickly evaluated the situation, though, and determined that the checks were, in fact, repayments of loans.
The value to Comer and Republicans, though, was in how James Biden purportedly got the money to repay his brother. The $40,000 repayment was made a few weeks after a consulting group led by James Biden had received a $150,000 payment from an entity that was basically Hunter Biden’s law firm. That entity had, the week prior, received $400,000 from another corporation that was paid as part of a partnership with a Chinese energy company. It’s not clear how directly downstream from the energy company the $40,000 is, or whether it was part of a larger pool of money from other sources (especially given the three-week lag time from the original payment to the loan repayment).
But you can see why all of this is appealing to Comer. His argument is that “even if this $40,000 check was a loan repayment from James Biden” — something that has been robustly established by now — “it still shows how Joe benefited from his family cashing in on his name — with money from China no less.” Perhaps.
All of that context is important when considering what Comer said about the check during the news conference Wednesday.
“We’ve also revealed,” Comer said in promoting his committee’s work, “how Joe Biden received $40,000 in laundered China money in the form of a personal check from his sister-in-law.”
It’s hard to imagine a more obviously dishonest claim.
The failure to note that this was very credibly a repayment of a loan, as though Joe Biden is morally culpable for how his brother earns money to pay him back. The assertion that this is “laundered China money,” as though, first, this money is proved to have been from that energy-company payment and, second, that it was filtered through some nefarious process to hide the source.
Comer must know that this assertion is at least a stretch, if not willfully false. But consider why he’s making it: to show how serious and important the impeachment probe is. If the probe can be shown as serious or important only by wildly misstating what it has uncovered, what does that suggest about the probe?
Not to be outdone, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) went further when summarizing the “evidence” against Biden that had been accrued to date.
“The Oversight Committee recently released two checks,” he asserted. “You see the graphics up here today. These checks are to Joe Biden! One is for $40,000 from China.”
It is not. It is from Joe Biden’s sister-in-law. It is in repayment for a loan Joe Biden made. It says so right on the check.
But this, according to Johnson, is one of the four most important pieces of evidence they’ve obtained against Joe Biden.
Make of that what you will.
Keeping up with politics is easy with The 5-Minute Fix Newsletter, in your inbox weekdays.
The intent of the news conference was to show progress; they unveiled a logo for the probe and pledged a new website containing the evidence they had accumulated to date. The most noteworthy element of the news conference, though, was a revelation about how dishonest they were willing to be to insinuate wrongdoing by the president.
Sign up for How To Read This Chart, a weekly data newsletter from Philip Bump
Last month, the House Oversight Committee and its chairman, James Comer (R-Ky.), made public two checks that had been written to Joe Biden by his sister-in-law, Sara Biden. Sara is married to the president’s brother James, who partnered on business deals with Hunter.
The two checks, one from 2017 and one from 2018, were identified on the subject line as “loan repayments.” Documents shared with The Washington Post reinforce the idea that the money was meant to repay loans from Joe Biden, then a private citizen. On July 28, 2017, Joe Biden wired $40,000 to the account of James and Sara Biden; Sara Biden wrote a check repaying that amount on Sept. 3. Then on Jan. 12, 2018, Joe Biden wired $200,000; on March 1, that loan was repaid.
Comer and his committee received these documents at the same time but staggered making them public, presumably in part to get more than one news cycle out of the discovery (which followed subpoenas the committee had issued). Comer cast doubt on the idea that the checks were repayments of loans, demanding Biden prove they were and scoffing at the idea that it was significant that the checks were identified as “loan repayment.” (His suggestion, it seems, is that those words were part of a years-long coverup by Sara Biden.) Reporters quickly evaluated the situation, though, and determined that the checks were, in fact, repayments of loans.
The value to Comer and Republicans, though, was in how James Biden purportedly got the money to repay his brother. The $40,000 repayment was made a few weeks after a consulting group led by James Biden had received a $150,000 payment from an entity that was basically Hunter Biden’s law firm. That entity had, the week prior, received $400,000 from another corporation that was paid as part of a partnership with a Chinese energy company. It’s not clear how directly downstream from the energy company the $40,000 is, or whether it was part of a larger pool of money from other sources (especially given the three-week lag time from the original payment to the loan repayment).
But you can see why all of this is appealing to Comer. His argument is that “even if this $40,000 check was a loan repayment from James Biden” — something that has been robustly established by now — “it still shows how Joe benefited from his family cashing in on his name — with money from China no less.” Perhaps.
All of that context is important when considering what Comer said about the check during the news conference Wednesday.
“We’ve also revealed,” Comer said in promoting his committee’s work, “how Joe Biden received $40,000 in laundered China money in the form of a personal check from his sister-in-law.”
It’s hard to imagine a more obviously dishonest claim.
The failure to note that this was very credibly a repayment of a loan, as though Joe Biden is morally culpable for how his brother earns money to pay him back. The assertion that this is “laundered China money,” as though, first, this money is proved to have been from that energy-company payment and, second, that it was filtered through some nefarious process to hide the source.
Comer must know that this assertion is at least a stretch, if not willfully false. But consider why he’s making it: to show how serious and important the impeachment probe is. If the probe can be shown as serious or important only by wildly misstating what it has uncovered, what does that suggest about the probe?
Not to be outdone, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) went further when summarizing the “evidence” against Biden that had been accrued to date.
“The Oversight Committee recently released two checks,” he asserted. “You see the graphics up here today. These checks are to Joe Biden! One is for $40,000 from China.”
It is not. It is from Joe Biden’s sister-in-law. It is in repayment for a loan Joe Biden made. It says so right on the check.
But this, according to Johnson, is one of the four most important pieces of evidence they’ve obtained against Joe Biden.
Make of that what you will.
