Comer Wants Biden to Testify in House Impeachment Probe

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Facts

  • Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the US House Oversight Committee, Thursday sent a letter to Pres. Joe Biden, inviting him to publicly testify before the chamber as part of the Republican-led impeachment inquiry.1
  • So far the inquiry into alleged access trading with foreign entities by the president and his son Hunter's businesses hasn't uncovered any evidence of wrongdoing by the elder Biden while the former US Senator and vice president was in public office.1
  • Comer claimed there's a 'yawning gap between' Biden's public comments and what the committee has learned. By testifying, Comer further claimed, Biden could explain under oath his involvement in his family's 'sources of income and the means it has used to generate it.'2
  • This comes one week after two former business associates of Hunter Biden — Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis — and Ukrainian businessman Lev Parnas provided the House with contradictory testimony about the Bidens.3
  • There's precedent for a president testifying before Congress — most recently Pres. Gerald Ford in 1974. But a White House spokesperson called Comer's letter a 'sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment.'4

Sources: 1Associated Press, 2ABC News, 3UPI and 4CBS.

Narratives

  • Democratic narrative, as provided by Huffington Post. This letter is just a continuation of the Republicans' kangaroo court disguised as an impeachment inquiry. Republicans have hit a dead end, so they're desperately creating a spectacle by calling the president to testify about something completely fabricated. If Republicans had anything on Biden they'd vote to upgrade this inquiry into a full-scale impeachment, but they haven't.
  • Republican narrative, as provided by The Washington Times. Upgrading this from an inquiry to a full-scale impeachment would be useless because it would die in the Democratic-majority Senate. It's more important to keep accumulating evidence against Biden and refer the case to the Justice Department to hold the president accountable. If Biden did nothing wrong, he should clear up any discrepancies by testifying in Congress.

Predictions