It never occurs to them that there might be nothing there
Trump: where’s my Biden impeachment?
House Republicans are increasingly disenchanted with Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., saying his leadership of the Biden impeachment inquiry has become a “clueless investigation” at best and — at worst — “a disaster.”
Less than 10 months away from the 2024 election, his impeachment investigation is barreling toward its conclusion, with no smoking gun to bring the president to his knees. Only one thing is clear: Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has lost the trust of some in his own party.
“One would be hard pressed to find the best moment for James Comer in the Oversight Committee,” one House Republican lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain internal relationships, told The Messenger. “It’s been a parade of embarrassments.”
The GOP House member is among over a dozen Republicans — lawmakers, senior aides and strategists — interviewed for this story.
Republican sources have a problem with what the investigation has not accomplished. The probe has taken a winding road, jetting off into different paths of inquiry, some more obscure than others, from chasing claims of foreign bribery and influence peddling to probing the sale of Hunter Biden’s artwork and loans between the president and his brother. Republicans at the highest level of the party criticize the chairman’s unfocused investigation.
“Comer has cast a wide net and caught very little fish. That is a big problem for him,” one personal ally of former President Donald Trump told The Messenger.
None of the Republicans they interviewed accepted that maybe there isn’t any evidence of wrongdoing. They’re just mad at Comer for failing to find it.
“James Comer continues to embarrass himself and House Republicans. He screws up over and over and over,” the source said. “I don’t know how Republicans actually impeach the president based on his clueless investigation and lack of leadership.”
[…]
Republicans also have grown tired of Comer’s frequent TV hits on conservative networks like Fox News and Newsmax in which they say he promises bombshell information, but then fails to produce impeachable evidence to meet the bar he himself has set too high.
One Republican pointed to the Oversight panel’s first impeachment hearing in September, which Comer said would be a venue for the committee to lay out its findings to date. But the hearing was widely panned as a disaster, with Jonathan Turley, one of the GOP’s star witnesses at the hearing, admitting there was not yet enough evidence to impeach the president.
I’m almost sorry for Comer (I said almost) but this is what happens to all Trump lackeys eventually. And this is Trump’s baby, all the way:
Twice-impeached Trump himself threatened House Republicans in August to impeach Biden “or fade into OBLIVION.”
The source close to Trump also said Comer “set the bar too high” for an impeachable offense, attempting to prove a direct payment to Joe Biden in the probe. The investigation spent weeks rolling out payments to Joe Biden from Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s son and brother, which the White House and Biden allies brushed off as loan repayments. Proving a direct payment to the president, the source said, was not necessary.
“He has been one to essentially say things like we need to find all these transfers to Joe Biden and that’s what an impeachable offense is,” the Trump ally said. “He has set the bar too high when it shouldn’t be set that high for impeachment. Congress determines what is a high crime and misdemeanor.”
Just point the finger, that’s all he wants. In fact, that’s one of the things Trump was impeached for when he told the Ukrainian president that all he wanted was a press conference announcing an investigation into Biden.
Mike “Pontius Pilate” Johnson is washing his hands of the problem:
The Republican lawmaker who took his complaints of Comer to the speaker’s office was told that Johnson is aware of the problem, agrees with the criticism but can’t really do much other than watch and shake his head, the lawmaker told The Messenger.
Comer’s Fox News fame has made him a powerful fund-raiser. So he’s still in the good graces of the leadership. Will Trump stick with him too?
“You have to start producing,” a Trump ally said. “The base is starting to get more and more frustrated with him because they see all this smoke but they don’t see the movement.”
Trumpie wants his Biden impeachment. I seriously doubt he’s going to stick with Comer if this keeps up. Stay tuned.