House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has teased to television audiences over the past month that four different people have appeared before committee investigators to provide information regarding his inquiry into whether President Biden and members of his family were involved in an influence-peddling scheme.
On Fox News in March, Comer said he had even met with some of the “four individuals” personally, and in an interview with Breitbart News this week, he characterized the four individuals as “whistleblowers.”
But Comer’s media tour has confounded his Democratic counterparts on the committee. After inquiring with Comer’s staff about the reported new witnesses, they were assured that Comer’s statements “in fact referred only to two individuals” and “no new witness information … had actually been provided,” according to a letter sent by the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (Md.), to Comer on Thursday and obtained by The Washington Post.
House rules require that committee records are to be made available to every member of the committee — majority and minority. However, it is not unusual for committee staff members to handle whistleblowers cautiously and keep sensitive information on a tight hold.
The two individuals were Eric Schwerin, the president of Hunter Biden’s investment firm, and Kathy Chung, an executive assistant to Joe Biden during his vice-presidential years. Comer, however, maintained in subsequent interviews that the committee has met with four individuals and again referred to them as “whistleblowers.”
“As you are aware, Mr. Schwerin and Ms. Chung, the two individuals your staff specifically identified as the individuals they understood to have been referenced during your March 6 Fox News interview, are not whistleblowers,” Raskin wrote. “Your repeated statements about ‘four people’ suggest that either you have intentionally misrepresented the Committee’s investigative progress to your conservative audience or that key investigative steps have been deliberately withheld from Committee Democrats.”
They’re full of shit. Of course they are. But it doesn’t matter for their purposes if they ever prove anything. All that matters is that they have talking points take to Fox News hits. This is not a serious undertaking, it’s a whole different game.