James Comer continues to try to deceive the Capitol Hill press corps and country
(LEFT)
Comer insists “I haven’t said he should be impeached,” after McCarthy declared an inquiry open(RIGHT)
Comer on Newsmax: “You know where I stand on that, I would vote to impeach right now.” pic.twitter.com/JSbL52x4Jt— Ian Sams (@IanSams46) September 19, 2023
New testimony from a number of FBI and Internal Revenue Service officials casts doubt on key claims from an IRS whistleblower who alleges there was political interference in the federal criminal investigation of Hunter Biden’s taxes.
According to transcripts provided to CNN, several FBI and IRS officials brought in for closed-door testimony by House Republicans in recent days said they don’t remember US Attorney David Weiss saying that he lacked the authority to decide whether to bring charges against the president’s son, or that Weiss said he had been denied a request for special counsel status.
Those twin claims, made by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, form the basis of Republican accusations that the Justice Department’s investigation into Biden’s taxes was tainted by political influence and that Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland tried to protect Hunter Biden in the investigation.
The new testimony comes as House Republicans begin an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and his family, potentially undercutting one element of that effort.
At issue is an October 2022 meeting between prosecutors and case agents working on the Hunter Biden investigation. Shapley alleges that during that meeting, Weiss, the then-US attorney for Delaware, told participants that he was “not the deciding person” on whether Hunter Biden was charged, according to Shapley’s notes from the meeting. House Republicans have taken that to mean Weiss was not in charge of his own investigation, and was deferring to a higher authority.
In addition to Shapley and Weiss, there were five others in that meeting, three of whom have recently testified to the Republican-led congressional committees now spearheading the impeachment inquiry.
Marcy Wheeler has looked closely at Shapley’s notes (they are public) and they are not as clear as they are being portrayed. He may have misinterpreted or misremembered what was actually said in that meeting but his own notes do not back up what is being said.
This is the sort of arcana featured in all these right wing pseudo-scandals from Whitewater to Benghazi and they almost always feature a whistleblower of some sort who is either full of shit or totally manipulated. I think that’s what we have here. Wheeler doesn’t suggest that Shapley is lying only that he heard something incorrectly and that his notes actually bear that out.