The first jarring line offered by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) during his conversation with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business on Thursday morning was his declaration that he believed that the impeachment inquiry he’s helping to lead into President Biden was “hopefully in the final stages.”
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In one sense, it was bold of Comer to join Bartiromo on Thursday. She has been in the habit recently of challenging her guests — not for their habit of not delivering on promises but because they aren’t doing enough. She keeps getting mad because she wants Republicans to do … something that embarrasses or hobbles Biden, whatever that might be. Maybe Comer gets a pass because he refuses to learn that his efforts to embarrass Biden have so spectacularly failed.
The segment began with Bartiromo reading from a list of questions Comer’s House Oversight Committee sent to the president in March.
“The committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family and their business associates,” she read. “The committee has identified no legitimate services to merit such lucrative payments.” Later, she added another section: “The committee has identified and successfully traced money from foreign transactions, including from China, straight to your bank accounts.”
All of this is nonsense or exaggeration. The millions of dollars mentioned were, for the most part, uncovered well before the impeachment inquiry began; most of the money, as The Washington Post’s Fact Checker explained in August, went to people other than members of Biden’s family. Multiple witnesses explained what services were provided for that money, including investments in real estate or consulting on corporate governance. There was no money from China going “straight to [Biden’s] bank accounts,” just a multistep, weeks-long chain of transactions that was in service of repaying money Joe Biden had loaned his brother.
All of this has also been pointed out countless times publicly — including by me when Comer and Bartiromo walked through the same points in December when the probe was in its final stages. Comer (ostensibly a rigorous investigator) and Bartiromo (ostensibly a journalist) should know these points are inaccurate. But neither acknowledged that to the audience. An audience, mind you, that is tuning into Fox Business and being treated to typical Fox News fare.
Comer’s response to all of this was the “final stages” comment and the announcement that he was subpoenaing another bank for records about some other account, as he’s done so often before. Maybe this will be the credible point of success — and maybe this time a wolf really is threatening the sheep.
Then it was more of the same, typical, debunked patter, like that the Bidens had lots of “shell companies” (see the aforementioned Fact Checker piece for an explanation) and that the Bidens couldn’t “answer exactly what the family did to receive this money” (ibid.).
Bartiromo asked how many bank accounts had been associated with the president, and Comer hemmed and hawed. Eventually, he landed back in his safe space of old allegations.
“We found two specific checks that went from the Biden family influence-peddling to Joe Biden personally, one for $200,000, and one for $40,000,” he said. “So we’ve identified a quarter of a million dollars in direct payments that Joe Biden received from his family’s shady influence-peddling schemes.”
In November, back when the probe was in its final stages, I described a similar claim as Comer’s “most dishonest attack yet.” After all, those checks were each repayment of old loans to Biden — a reality manifested in records showing the initial loans and in the fact that both checks, written well before Biden became president, are labeled as “loan repayment” in the memo field. Comer’s argument is, in essence, that if you loan your brother money and he pays you back, you’re morally culpable for how he got the money to do so.
“You’re talking about dozens of accounts, dozens of LLCs and no answer yet as to what they did to receive this money,” Comer repeated, raising this old point for the third time in the interview. “It’s, I think, Maria, the biggest public corruption scandal in our lifetimes and the fact—”
Bartiromo interjected: “Wow!”
Comer concluded by complaining that the media didn’t want to write about it. Which isn’t true! It’s just that writing “actually” gets a bit repetitive, especially when the thing that isn’t true was robustly debunked more than nine months ago.
Then Bartiromo turned her attention to Oversight’s effort to “investigat[e] the White House’s so-called push to boost voter registration.”
“One of the things we’re doing,” Comer said, “is we’re trying to follow the money, much like we’ve done in the Biden family investigation. We’re trying to identify bank accounts that we can subpoena to see who’s paying for many of these campus protests, voter registration drives, things to influence the election.” He also mentioned the effort to crack down on noncitizen voting, which has been a hot topic on the right since House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Noncitizen voting is already illegal and occurs at nonsignificant rates, but the boundaries of reality have not constrained Comer previously. Going to see who’s paying for the campus protests, eh? Yeah, I get that this is good Fox News fodder, but “putting up a cheap tent” is not a particularly expensive endeavor that defies explanation.
Then the interview culminated in truly spectacular fashion.
“We reported this week on a flier that was being handed out, according to another congressman,” Bartiromo said to Comer, “basically telling illegals who are coming across the border, don’t forget to vote for Joe Biden. It’s illegal to vote if you’re not an American citizen in a presidential election.”
“Are you saying that the administration and the Democrats are trying to do just that?” she asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, somebody’s paying for that,” Comer replied. “Somebody’s doing it. And we’re going to try to find out who it is and do what we can to hold them accountable.”
When this story first emerged last month, it was quickly pointed out that the fliers appeared to be fake, misinformation centered on elevating the prospect of noncitizens voting. Last week, NPR dug into the story further, demonstrating that the purported originator of the fliers denied creating them, pointing out various holes in the story and noting that it originated with right-wing activists.
But here was Bartiromo raising the issue to Comer, each of them treating this noncredible allegation as credible and damaging. Just as the two had done so often in 2023 with the debunked claim that Biden had taken a bribe. And just as they continue to do with the impeachment investigation.
Comer assured Bartiromo that his approach to voter-registration questions would be “like [what] we’ve done in the Biden family investigation.”
That is very much the problem.
