Fill-In Like a Villain
If you're not watching the House GOP impeachment stunt, well, right.
Still, the part where Rep. Smith (R-MO08) asked, or, as the
critic put it↱,
rehearsed the wrong question is a useful indicator of how its going.
Smith: We know that over two million dollars of Hunter Biden's tax liabilities were paid off by a big Democrat party donor and Hollywood lawyer who is named Kevin Morris. James Biden, the President's brother, told investigators he did not know how Hunter Biden even knew this individual, but was later asked to thank him for the payment, quote, "on behalf of the family". The Biden family. The family. So, how would such payment, that essentially pushed under the rug the President's son's tax problems, at least for one year, be considered a campaign finance violation on the part of the Biden campaign?
Witness: Thank you for the question. I have no idea. I thought you were going to ask me why would Leslie Wolf say "don't look into that", and I think the answer to that probably is that if it's a campaign contribution, then it implicates Political Person Number One, and that, apparently, is a big barrier that had been created throughout this entire investigation.
And as far as it being a campaign contribution, that two million dollars actually was intended to satisfy the liabilities for two years of Hunter Biden's late-filed and unpaid taxes. Um.
Note the setup to Smith's actual question; none of it actually supports the question, which is pretty straightforward and technical:
How would certain money paid be considered a campaign finance violation? And the answer is "probably" that the money creates an implication that has been lacking in the investigation, "a big barrier" to moving forward. What does that passive language mean, "a big barrier that had been created"? We might wonder who created the barrier and how it works, because it sounds like an inherent barrier of investigation with prosecutorial intention, to connect the alleged impropriety to the alleged suspect. And, to be clear, while Republicans aren't quite sure
what kind of hearing↱ they're conducting—a question of rules and procedure that aren't really so hard to answer as the House GOP pretends—we might reasonably expect that by the time we're ready to conduct an impeachment inquiry, yes, this connection between accused wrongdoing and suspect is supposed to be a little more apparent than grasping at uncertainty.
It should be noted that Rep. Smith did follow up by asking the question the witness was expecting:
Smith: Is it unusual for an assistant prosecutor to say don't ... don't look at this individual, this person's off limits?
Witness: As I mentioned in my opening statement, that is how investigations develop ....
We might remind that Republicans used to be the political party arguing that government doesn't work. This spectacle is yet another exhibit in the catalog; when they said govermnent doesn't work, it wasn't an assessment or projection, but, rather, a threat.
The hardest thing to comprehend is that nobody is actually forcing Republicans to behave this way; it's all their own doing, by their own will.
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Notes:
@Acyn. "This is a great example of how prepared Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are". Twitter. 28 September 2023. Twitter.com. 28 September 2023. https://bit.ly/3LF9w9B
@MuellerSheWrote. "OMG they rehearsed the wrong questions Also, it's not a campaign contribution to Joe Biden to loan Hunter Biden money to pay his tax debts. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen lol". Twitter. 28 September 2023. Twitter.com. 28 September 2023. https://bit.ly/3PZ1yL6
