(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) The spontaneous fecklessness of Hunter Biden in backing out of his requested public hearing on Wednesday did not leave it for want of over-the-top grandstanding, most of which came from Democrats desperate to deflect from the issue at hand.
Reps. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.; Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas; Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. were among those beclowning themselves before the cameras in a bid to preempt any of the adverse information that could potentially make the evening news’s highlight reels—or, more importantly, the “trending” charts on social media.
Truth be told, their instincts weren’t wrong. In a news cycle teeming with issues of the utmost urgency, most of which revolve around Donald Trump, news about Joe Biden and his years-old corruption scandals simply seems a bit anticlimactic.
Perhaps, as some Democrats observed, the methodical approach taken by House Republicans—whose investigation hinged on ignoring the fact that a laptop full of damning evidence had already spoiled all of their major bombshells—was always doomed to be an exercise in futility.
Leading left-wing intellectuals, such as the Meiselas brothers and social-media influencer Harry Sisson, delighted in Moskowitz’s “brilliant” soundbyte moment of attempting to “flip the script” on Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, by offering to file a motion for impeachment on the spot.
“I want to, with my last couple minutes, show the American people that they’re never going to impeach Joe Biden,” he said. “It’s never going to happen because they don’t have the evidence, OK? This is a show. It’s all fake.”
In a brilliant moment during Wednesday's sham impeachment hearing, Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz flipped the script and called the Republicans' bluff by making his own motion to impeach President Biden and asking the GOP to second it. The Republicans crumbled as he… pic.twitter.com/JmmdSEOErn
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) March 21, 2024
Gutsy move, knowing that an entire smoking arsenal of evidence would not change the outcome—unless voting to remove Biden from office suddenly became a political imperative for depraved Democrats and their deep-state allies, in order either to retain or expand their stranglehold on power.
Such a possibility, of course, doesn’t seem so far afield if a viable alternative in the presidential race were suddenly to emerge to replace the deeply unpopular incumbent.
However, Moskowitz’s point is taken: If impeachment—and, by extension, conviction—were the only meaningful outcome of such an investigation, it would be as much an utter waste of time and resources to proceed, with only eight months left until voters get to decide, as, say, sending more money to finance Ukraine’s ongoing territorial dispute with Russia.
Instead, it would be far better to have Jordan, Comer, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Byron Donalds of Florida and other GOP heavyweights on the two committees hitting the campaign trail to focus on protecting and rebuilding the anemic House majority.
Or they might spend their time reading the newly proposed $1.2 trillion appropriations bill and readying for battle, if necessary, over what looks to be the biggest pile of pork ever shoved down Americans’ throats without going to Iowa.
There are reasons, on the other hand, for Comer, Jordan and company to proceed with their work—notably the pursuit of criminal referrals that would carry into a potential Trump term, when members of Biden’s inner circle might, for once, truly be held accountable.
The knowledge of that sword of Damocles dangling over not just his own head but his son’s and other family members’—and the possibility that his failure to win reelection could render him impotent to shield them from real consequences—might be the psychological straw that broke the 81-year-old dictator.
So, ready the airtight case indeed, gents, but spare the slow drip of water-torturous reveals that all blur together and leave media-consumers with an unending sense of déjà vu.
In a rare moment of lucidity, Swalwell, the notorious Chinese honeypot mark and network-news gas-spewer, hit a shot across the bow by pointing out that not even Fox News was picking up Wednesday’s hearing.
“In fact, one of their anchors, as they broke away, said, ‘This is the same hearing over and over and over,'” Swalwell observed. “At what point are you going to gonna fish or cut bait?”
Swalwell just did a top 10 reasons the House GOP impeachment is over, capping it with officially declaring the inquiry dead. pic.twitter.com/zgPT4TLXgf
— 𝚁𝚎𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚌𝚊 𝙱𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚜𝚌𝚑 (@RebeccaBeitsch) March 20, 2024
But while he offered his own list of 10 reasons why the Biden impeachment was “dead,” most were totally off the mark.
Here is, in fact, the actual list of reasons it’s time for the GOP to move on from impeachment:
10. It can’t clear the Senate. They would be lucky if Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., even brought it to the Floor.
9. It might not clear the House. Sadly, when there is talk of RINOs resigning to give Democrats the majority, that means there are a few who won’t vote for impeachment no matter the evidence, especially if it is a lost cause.
8. It’s a waste of money. Frankly, most every lead that Comer and Jordan are setting out to prove has likely already been proven by the laptop. Is there anything that perusing hundreds more emails and bank records is going to elucidate that we don’t already know? If it helps build a case, then great. However, it does not make for great television anymore, so save it all and release a final bombshell report covering all the salient points that folks may have missed or forgotten in one fell swoop.
7. It’s a waste of time. With the clock ticking, there are too many other priorities, even in terms of oversight. Consider the promises that arose from the Weaponization Subcommittee (an offshoot of the Judiciary Committee) about how it was going to begin holding the deep state accountable. Its failure to do so has, no doubt, emboldened permanent Washington even further. Moreover, as Democrats pointed out, Republicans succeeded in impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas but have yet to send it to the Senate, likely because it would only languish there if they did.
6. SCOTUS has better things to do. As Congress grows increasingly performative and interested in conducting oversight through public tribunal, the high court has grown more activist and, by default, obligated to legislate. They are carrying a heavy load on their upcoming docket with several cases that involve free speech in the modern era, as well as many others tied to the upcoming election. The idea of pulling Chief Justice John Roberts off the bench for yet another impeachment trial seems a bit preposterous when one weighs the relative importance of his priorities.
5. It’s politically risky. The GOP must never forget the lessons of 1998, when the impeachment backlash cost congressional seats in spite of the incontrovertible “evidence” that Bill Clinton had lied to the faces of the American public. Perhaps they just didn’t want to have Al Gore take over for the charmingly charismatic yet pathological equivocator—who did, in fairness, preside over the only balanced budgets many of us have seen or ever will in our lifetimes. Would the GOP take the hit again over Biden? With no seats to spare in the House and cautious optimism about the Senate political map, it isn’t worth finding out.
4. The American public will have the opportunity to remove Biden from office soon enough. It’s true that his presidency is an unmitigated disaster, but early removal does not, in this case, present any actual remedy. The damage is already done. And the fact is, few people think Biden has been running the country to begin with, so at best it would be a symbolic victory.
3. Criminal referrals would be more effective. Call it what you will, but if Trump succeeds in defying all odds amid the gauntlet of lawfare attacks and vote-fraud schemes, plus whatever else may be in store for the summer, vengeance will not only be his mandate but his obligation. Adam Smith wrote that “mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent,” and the egregious attacks waged by bad-faith actors on the Left have been an affront not only to Trump but to all stakeholders in the institutions that they have undermined and destabilized in the process. What an opening salvo it would be to have the criminal referrals ready and waiting for Joe Biden and his leading co-conspirators, all standing trial in a grand-scale RICO case that mirrors everything Jack Smith, Fani Willis and Letitia James have undertaken against his predecessor.
2. Getting rid of Biden would do Democrats a favor. Biden just became the first incumbent president since Jimmy Carter to lose a primary race. But to borrow liberally the famous line from Lloyd Bentsen, political neophyte Jason Palmer, the victor in American Samoa, is no Teddy Kennedy. Nor is the rage-a-holic Biden anything like the saintly Carter. In fact, his approval rating is 5% lower than Carter’s was before one of the biggest electoral bloodbaths in modern American history. Why should the GOP do all the heavy lifting and solve the Democrat National Committee’s Biden problem for them?
1. KAMALA WOULD BE PRESIDENT. Full stop.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
