The day after the House GOP voted unanimously to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with some congressional Republicans admitting there is no evidence of impeachable offenses, the lead investigator declared their most damning evidence is a long-ago widely-debunked conspiracy theory.
Republican Oversight Chairman Jim Comer, head of one of the three most-powerful House committees and the top promoter of the push to impeach President Biden, Thursday morning was asked by Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo to name his “most damning” evidence.
“We’ve talked about the potential of money laundering and bribery,” said Bartiromo, who has been called an “election fraud promoter,” and a “once-respected journalist” who became a “full-blown Donald Trump sympathizer.”
“What can you tell us about the evidence?” she asked.
Comer claimed “over $24 million” has been run through a “series” of shell companies. “And then they laundered the money down to the Biden family members, 10 Biden family members.”
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He defends his money-laundering claim because banks, he says, filed suspicious activity reports (SARs). According to the Thomson Reuters Institute, in 2022 alone there were 3.6 million SARs filed, and that number “this year is likely to set additional records.”
He adds, “six different banks accused the Bidens of money laundering – that’s a serious crime.” Money laundering is a serious crime but filing an SAR does not mean a bank is accusing someone of money laundering, nor does it mean money laundering is taking place.
The Chairman claims “we know they got tens of billions of dollars from bad people in bad countries. He admits, “We don’t know what exactly they did, but alleges, “We fear Joe Biden’s compromised.”
Comer then continues to make broad, unspecific allegations, using non-definitive words and terms, like, “we fear,” and, “we figure.”
“We figure this is one reason that he’s soft on China,” a claim he’s made before, in part based on the President removing Trump’s ban on TikTok, a ban that has been challenged in court.
He also claims, “we have specific policy decisions that Joe Biden made while he was vice president and president that we fear were made because he was compromised,” without providing any evidence to support the claim.
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Comer again defaults to the long-debunked Burisma conspiracy theory.
“We fear this is one reason that he obviously fired the prosecutor who was investigating Hunter’s corrupt energy company in Ukraine when he was vice president.”
Not one word of that is true, although the owner of Burisma, the energy company, was under investigation and is reportedly now wanted by Ukrainian authorities.
Then-Vice President Biden did not nor could he “fire” Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian Prosecutor General, who was removed from his post for not investigating corruption, by the Ukrainian Parliament, after both domestic and international calls for him to be replaced for not doing his job. Those calls came from the European Union (EU), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United States, where it was Obama administration policy that Shokin had to go.
Comer’s claim is further debunked by numerous reports going back to 2019.
“Burisma Holdings was not under scrutiny at the time Joe Biden called for Shokin’s ouster, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, an independent agency set up in 2014 that has worked closely with the FBI,” USA Today reported that year. “Shokin’s office had investigated Burisma, but the probe focused on a period before Hunter Biden joined the company, according to the anti-corruption bureau.”
Also in 2019, Bloomberg published a report with this headline: “Ukraine Prosecutor Says No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Bidens.”
“I do not want Ukraine to again be the subject of U.S. presidential elections,” Shokin’s successor Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg. “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws — at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing. A company can pay however much it wants to its board.”
Watch Comer’s remarks below or at this link.
BARTIROMO: What do you believe is the most damning evidence you have right now?
COMER: *rehashes debunked Burisma stuff* pic.twitter.com/WoaA3adn04
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 14, 2023
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