Oversight Democrats Release a Brand New Report Rebutting the “Same Old Lies and Russian Propaganda” That Define Republicans’ Failed Political Hit-Job

Related: Republican Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees Release Report on Impeachment Inquiry on President Joe Biden

August 22, 2024 - Washington, D.C. - On Monday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, issued the following statement after the Republican Chairs of the Committees on Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means released a report making clear that their year-and-a-half long investigation of President Biden did not find a shred of evidence that he has engaged in any wrongdoing:

“Today we release a brand new report debunking and refuting the same old lies and propaganda that have defined the Oversight Republicans’ embarrassing work in the wasted 118th Congress.  What do you call a hellbent 20-month impeachment drive whose managers finally just dissolve into compulsive repetition of thoroughly discredited and meaningless accusations?  I would call it a complete exoneration of the target of their pathetic attacks—President Joe Biden.  Every lie, distortion and dirty trick thrown at Joe Biden in the 118th Congress has sharply boomeranged and imploded, making our Republican colleagues look inept and absurd.  Their compulsive flailing about has not only proven, once more, that President Biden committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable crime, but has paradoxically vindicated President Biden’s essential honor and decency.

“For 20 months, Republicans have been conducting an investigation that was motivated by Donald Trump’s rage about being held accountable for his demonstrable constitutional crimes in office and his desire for matching political retribution against his successor.  This so-called impeachment inquiry was unabashedly ‘framed up’ for political purposes in the 2024 election by Rep. Jim Jordan and his tailgate rider Rep. James Comer, and reliant throughout on blatant Russian propaganda and disinformation peddled by Alexander Smirnov and other Russian agents, as well as Rudy Giuliani, who are all conveniently excluded from Republicans’ report.  Not surprisingly, Republicans give us nothing today but pathetic innuendo and still cannot even specify the alleged high crime and misdemeanor they think Joe Biden has committed.  Wasting the public’s money like tinpot Banana Republicans, they have amassed a mountain of pedestrian material, including 3.8 million pages of documents, and more than 80 hours of testimony from 19 witnesses, which serves only to crystallize the stark contrast between Joe Biden, a career public servant who has spent his life fighting for American working families and our democracy, and Donald Trump, a twice-impeached career grifter, fraudster, adjudicated sexual assaulter, and multiply convicted criminal felon who treated the presidency as an instrument to enrich himself, his family, and his corporate billionaire cronies at the expense of the people and in complete violation of his constitutional duties and ban on collection of foreign government payments and Emoluments.

“Committee Republicans don’t seem to comprehend how comical and isolated their blathering and fulminations are now.  Even the House Republican caucus seems to recognize that the Committees’ report—which simply organizes their tired and baseless innuendo, defamation and disinformation into chapters—does not contain evidence or even articulation of a single impeachable offense.  It’s all a tad humiliating for the distinguished Chairmen Jordan, Smith, and Comer.  The report they throw out into the world during an August Congressional recess and at the start of the Democratic National Convention as a last-minute face-saving gesture is actually a Banana Republican cream pie they have just pressed into their own faces.  If there is any merit to the tiny and barely audible plea for impeachment of President Biden, why are the Republicans doing nothing about it?  No one has fallen for this package of lies and propaganda.”

Congressional Republicans openly admit that they “aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not” and instead have used taxpayer dollars to spread lies in service of Trump to “frame up the 2024 race.”

• Chairman Comer himself has explicitly and repeatedly admitted that he has conducted this investigation to help Trump’s campaign by trying to influence “people in November when they vote,” “make sure every voter knows the truth about the Biden Crime Family,” send Trump’s poll numbers “trending upward,” and hurt “Biden with swing voters.”

Unfortunately for Chairman Comer, a wide majority of Americans and more than 57 percent of independents view his impeachment effort as “bogus” according to polling by Fox News. 

• “Most House Republicans,” from Rep. Higgins to Rep. Graves to Rep. Perry, concede there is no evidence to justify impeachment.

• Right-wing media, including The Washington Examiner, The New York Post, Newsmax and Fox News, report that the impeachment ‘investigation’ is a “failure,” “whiff,” “dead end,” that has “yet to produce any direct evidence of misconduct,” “nothing to connect…to the President,” delivered “evidence…in Joe Biden’s favor,” “gone nowhere,” and “is not gonna go anywhere.”  Even Sean Hannity told his viewers to “forget about the impeachment inquiry.”
   
• It has been clear from the start that this sham impeachment inquiry was  simply about using taxpayer dollars to spread lies in service of Trump to “frame up the 2024 race.”  Congressional Republicans openly admitted they “aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not.”  It comes as little surprise that just as President Biden announces he is no longer the nominee, Congressional Republicans appear to have lost all interest in the endeavor.

Oversight Committee Democrats released a new memo debunking the lies that have defined Republicans’ failed impeachment inquiry and detailing the mountain of exculpatory evidence that discredits Republican claims and exonerates President Biden.  Below is a summary of the report’s key findings.

• Republicans’ investigation has uncovered a mountain of exculpatory evidence that definitively exonerates President Biden; proves he did not engage in any wrongdoing, much less an impeachable offense; and makes crystal clear he was not part of, did not profit from, and took no official actions to benefit his family members’ business ventures.
   
• The evidence amassed through this investigation yet again proves that:  (1) As Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden was central to leading a cross-partisan international coalition pushing Ukraine to more forcefully address the scourge of corruption; (2) As a private citizen, following four decades of uninterrupted public service, he used income from his best-selling memoir, Promise Me, Dad, to help out his sonand brother, as well as to donate more than $1 million to charity; and (3) As a President committed to the independence of the Department of Justice, as well as to transparency and oversight, he kept on a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney who was investigating his son, and ensured that he and his Administration fully cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Hur and Congress, even in the context of its most baseless and nakedly political investigations.  In essence, Republicans’ ‘investigation’ has sought to weaponize the bond between President Biden and Hunter Biden at a time when Joe Biden feared losing his only surviving son to drug addiction—after having already lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 and his wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and young daughter, Amy, to a car crash in 1972.
   
• At the “heart” of Republicans’ baseless impeachment inquiry is Russian disinformation, which congressional Republicans have willingly repeated and amplified—despite warningsand rebukes from their own GOP colleagues.  In fact, House Republicans recycled allegations propagated by the Kremlin that had already been repeatedly debunked by Donald Trump’s own  Treasury Department and State Department, as well as by the intelligence community,yearsbefore House Republicans made them the centerpiece of their impeachment inquiry.
   
• Chairman Comer has blockedthe Committee’s investigation into the actual corruption of former President Trump, who unconstitutionally took millions of dollars from foreign governments, including China and Saudi Arabia, during his term in the White House and while those governments were seeking favorable action by the Trump Administration.  Comer continues to enable Trump’s brazen corruption by blockinginvestigation into Trump’s offer to sell out U.S. policy to corporations in exchange for a billion dollars.

Click here to read additional information from Oversight Democrats.

Click here to read today’s memo from Oversight Democrats.
Source: House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Democrats