When congressional investigators met with Devon Archer, a former Hunter Biden associate, in August, Republicans had high hopes. They shouldn’t have hoped: Archer said under oath that Joe Biden was not involved with Burisma, he did not discuss business with his son’s associatesAnd I did not accept bribes.
But immediately after the closed-door testimony, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer painted a very different picture. In fact, the Kentucky Republican was peddling a variety of very provocative statements on Archer’s testimony – including during appearances on national television – leading the public to believe the witness had made the arguments against the president.
When the the official transcript has been made publicreality showed the opposite of what Comer had said.
Last week, the controversial Republican committee chairman faced the same allegations in reference to another witness. NBC News reported:
An attorney for Kevin Morris, a Hunter Biden lawyer who loaned him millions of dollars to pay his taxes, accuses Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., of misrepresenting Morris’ testimony in a closed hearing closed Thursday.
In a letter to Comer, a copy of which I obtained, Morris’s lawyer wrote: “Not two hours after leaving the transcribed interview with Mr. Morris, you issued a press release with cherry-picked names on the shutter, out of context and totally misleading. descriptions of what Mr. Morris said. So much for your staff’s promise that Mr. Morris would be treated fairly.
The same correspondence demanded that the oversight committee release the full transcript of the question-and-answer session with Morris.
Ian Sams, White House spokesperson replied shortly after, Comer appeared to have been caught “blatantly lying,” adding, “It happened over and over again.”
To be sure, the relevant transcript has not yet been made public, and the president’s office told reporters Friday that his claims would eventually be corroborated. It is certainly possible, although it would constitute a radical break with the recent past.
As a Washington Post analysis explained last week: “On And on And on And on And onCommittee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has made debunked and baseless public statements that characterize the president and/or his son as dishonest or has rushed to publish unsubstantiated claims or information that similarly collapse under close scrutiny.
Others have noticed the same problem. Axios reported in September, Comer “repeatedly exaggerated and distorted the findings of his investigation into the Biden family.” The report added that the Republican “at times undermined his credibility” by “exaggerating his commission’s findings.”
Today, another witness’s lawyer again accused Comer of misrepresenting his closed-door testimony.
This is in the context of the Kentucky Republican Party. making promises he couldn’t keepby organizing hearings which undermined his own partisan effortspublishing ostensible “evidence” full of factual errorsarousing the anger of his own GOP colleaguesAnd fail spectacularly to find credible evidence against his target.
But perhaps most important is to appreciate Comer’s motivations. The more the Chairman of the Oversight Committee plays with the truth, the more we remember that his impeachment campaign has failed to such an extent that he feels it is necessary to play with the truth.
