The party quickly moved toward impeachment once it had the gavel in hand. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) was one of its most vocal members, laying out claims about Biden and his family that were quickly amplified and supported by conservative media, particularly Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. By September, an embattled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had acceded to demands that a formal impeachment inquiry be launched.
In the end, nothing came of it. Two hearings were held over the next 10 months, neither of which presented any significant evidence linking Biden to his son’s business activities. Hunter Biden was convicted, but that was not what Comer or any other Republican congressman revealed. The central argument promoted by Comer and repeated endlessly by Bartiromo was discredited when the man who made it was accused of lying. This is just the most glaring example of a Comer-led argument backfired.
Fox News has lost interest in the issue, with discussions of Biden and impeachment dropping from more than 800 in December to about 40 last month. In May, Bartiromo hosted Comer to discuss the status of the investigation, but he presented the same string of unproven allegations he had presented months earlier. (Three of the five shows that have discussed impeachment the most in the past two years have been on Fox News and Fox Business: Bartiromo’s show and Sean Hannity’s primetime show.)
One obvious reason the investigation has receded is that it has become less politically useful. One of the investigation’s co-leaders, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), began shifting focus to questions about Biden’s age in March. Last month’s debate underscored that issue, making unfounded accusations about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden less useful.
In an interview with Punchbowl News, Comer promised to make his findings public but acknowledged there’s little point in doing so so soon.
“Why do anything now?” he argued. “Napoleon said, ‘Never invade while your enemy is destroying himself.'”
(That’s not exactly what Napoleon said.)
Instead, Comer said in an interview with Newsmax on Thursday that the results of a “credible” Republican poll “are[ed] I will hand it over to the next Attorney General.”
I mean, of course, someone appointed by Donald Trump, whose months of efforts, and the fueling of the fire by Hannity and Bartiromo, will give a Trump appointee a pretext to bring criminal charges against the defeated Joe Biden.
If Trump wins the November election and pursues such a prosecution, he would have the support of most Republicans: Nearly three-quarters of Republicans support Trump prosecuting Biden and his family, according to a Bright Line Watch survey conducted using YouGov polling, compared with fewer than half of Americans overall.
Nearly two-thirds of Republicans believe Biden (or the “next Republican president”) should do so “in response to the indictment of former President Donald Trump,” which makes sense given that three-quarters of Republicans believe Biden has directed the Justice Department to indict political opponents.
He didn’t. Bright Line Watch also surveyed hundreds of political science scholars, and only 2% of that group agreed that Biden is using the Justice Department to attack his opponents.
These experts were asked to assess what events could pose a significant threat to American democracy. Even before the Supreme Court’s recent decision, majorities suggested that granting the president blanket immunity would endanger democracy. More than nine in 10 people in the latest polls held that position.
What is equally worrying in their eyes? Trump’s indictment of his opponents if he wins the White House. 96% of political scientists surveyed perceived this as a threat to democracy, with the vast majority calling it an “extraordinary” threat.
Comer has insisted to anyone who will listen that his investigation found Biden criminally culpable. Many of his colleagues aren’t convinced, which is one of the reasons no impeachment resolutions have actually been filed. So while that skepticism persists and Biden’s campaign has been derailed for unrelated reasons, the impeachment inquiry has been shelved. Comer has positioned his findings as an indirect reason to vote for Trump.
If Trump were to return to office, he would have a supposedly objective analysis to present to the attorney general, leading him to take what he would see as retaliation against his predecessor. That would seem like a natural course of action for Trump and his allies. It is exactly the kind of depravity political scientists fear.
