For reasons we needn’t dwell on here, it’s obvious that Tail-Gunner Jamie Comer isn’t naturally suited to fill the role of Porgy (introduced on Broadway by Danville’s own Todd Duncan) in the Gershwin Brothers’ immortal opera, Porgy and Bess.
But that truism hasn’t deterred the Republican congressman from Whereverhehangshishatishishome from adopting a heralded number in the show’s second act as something of a theme song. It begins:
Oh, I got plenty o’ nuttin’ An’ nuttin’s plenty fo’ me
Throughout his tenure as chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Comer has led an “investigation” that would make Torquemada swoon into the business dealings of President Biden’s son, Hunter, and the alleged personal involvement of the president himself in those affairs. It is Comer’s theory that the president may have directly benefitted from those activities during his time as vice president from 2009 to 2017 and that his son’s commercial interests sway his decision-making process as president, that he was, in Jamie’s word, “compromised.”
It’s a cute notion but suffers at Comer’s abject failure to prove any of it after eight futile months. Our boy Jamie has come up empty in his attempt to portray President Biden as the capo di tutti capi of an extensive crime family, a position that would provide him with an opportunity to line his pockets with ill-gotten gain and permit him to play the nation for a bunch of saps.
To this point, Jamie has failed to specify a single law that the president may have personally violated. That little detail didn’t stop him from hopping on NewsMax – one of his favored far right-wing cable outlets – earlier this week to proclaim that the president is embroiled in “the biggest political scandal of my lifetime.”
So, Jamie’s got plenty o’ nuttin,’ but nuttin’s plenty fo’ him.
“Every American who works hard and pays taxes understands this: the Biden’s took $21 million from our enemies around the world,” Comer said. “They tried to hide it through fake companies. They didn’t pay a penny of taxes on it. They marketed Joe Biden as being able to sell access and influence to some bad people in some bad countries around the world and the president of the United States wants to say he just talked to them about the weather? I mean nobody’s buying that.”
Ooh, that sounds horrible. Too bad it’s about 90 percent horse manure. That mouthful from our hero requires some unraveling, but first our brave and noble Tail-Gunner wants to assure you that his committee will continue to spread said horse manure “on about a bi-weekly basis, releasing more information, more evidence of corruption, more proof that Joe Biden was front and center in this influence peddling scheme and that should concern every American.”
Of course, it should be noted that the next time Jamie presents any evidence of the president’s involvement in an influence peddling scheme will mark the first time, if it ever occurs.
This entire brouhaha revolves around Hunter, who, with his father holding a rather prominent governmental position, decided to, as the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines. He formed various corporations and, using his old man’s name and reputation, began doing business with foreign firms that held connections to their governments in places like China, Ukraine and Romania.
Now, that may seem rather shady, no doubt because it is. But there’s no law saying the scion of any high government official is prohibited from using his famous name to get work.
From there, with the logic of a two-year-old, Comer concluded that then-Vice President Biden was the real power broker in the business, calling the shots behind a curtain, sort of like the Wizard of Oz. It was all a nice idea from a politics-is-war and truth-be-damned philosophy, but in so doing the Tail-Gunner abandoned at least two important considerations – the facts and the truth.
It starts with Ukraine, where Hunter Biden agreed to sit on the board of Burisma Holdings LTD, a gas company. At some point, western allies, including the United States, concluded that a state prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, should get the heave-ho for failing to uproot the nation’s endemic corruption. It was VP Biden’s job to travel to Kyiv and inform President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that if Shokin wasn’t given the opportunity to spend more time with his family, to cite an old euphemism, the U.S. would not honor previously agreed upon loan guarantees.
And down goes Shokin.
The details behind that scenario have been confirmed several times. Comer, however, has agitated that VP Biden moved to dump Shokin because he was investigating Burisma, which somehow could have landed Hunter in Dutch. Comer also made sure that a story circulated that the FBI was investigating a claim that a Burisma official provided VP Biden with a $5 million bribe to dispense with Shokin.
Suffice to say none of Tail-Gunner’s claims have held up. That hasn’t stopped our boy from repeatedly citing this blather, true or not, when it works to his advantage.
Other Hunter Biden deals, including one with CEFC Energy, a conglomerate with ties to the Chinese Communist government, have drawn scrutiny with Comer asserting that VP Biden was intimately involved in his son’s foreign business transactions, Biden, now the president, obviously, insists he has never been involved in his son’s business and has not sought to benefit him in any official capacity.
Comer, it seems, is basing his claims on a J.R.R. Tolkien-level fantasy. Hunter Biden, as Comer has widely publicized, has a troubled background, having taken the old sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll adage a bit too far. But his old man loves him and, according to former Hunter business associate Devon Archer, the president calls his son almost every day. On about 20 occasions that Archer said he is aware of, the president called while Hunter was meeting with business associates, at which time he placed his father on speaker phone to say hello.
From this, Republicans extrapolate a Vito Corleone-level conspiracy. That and several dinners the president had with Hunter and acquaintances, including, apparently, some of his son’s business associates. This has also been taken as a clear sign that the president is fully embroiled in the business operation.
And there was at least one reference on a laptop Hunter abandoned at a repair center to some money going to “the big guy,” which viewed in some quarters as a reference to President Biden, a reference that was not made by Hunter and cannot be confirmed.
With all the dribs and drabs, Comer finds it inconvenient to cite testimony offered by Archer during a closed-door session with committee staff where he acknowledged that President Biden was never involved in Hunter’s business dealings, that he did not profit from those dealings and took no official action intended to benefit his son’s activities. Archer repeatedly emphasized that across a decade-long relationship with Hunter Biden, he was not aware of President Biden ever discussing his son’s business.
So it goes. Jamie doesn’t care.
By the way, noting Comer’s claims cited earlier that the Biden Crime Family™ collected “$21 million from our enemies around the world,” Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, a Cincinnati boy, by the way, found that the sum was closer to $7 million, since partners and associates also had their hands in the till. Still a nice, tidy sum for Hunter and some of his kin, obviously, but not as much as claimed. What’s more, Ukraine and Romania shouldn’t be included among America’s enemies, something Comer hinted at.
Kessler also pointed out that Hunter Biden’s firms that Jamie derided as shell companies were actually legitimate “with real business functions.”
Regardless, despite all the speculation, innuendo and paucity of evidence, congressional Republicans are gearing up for impeachment, a rather overt payback for the two times House Democrats impeached his predecessor, former President Donald James Trump, who, you may have heard, faces four criminal indictments in four different jurisdictions.
By the way, in case you’re unfamiliar with Porgy and Bess and you’re wondering why Jamie wouldn’t be a good fit, the part calls for a baritone.
Bill Straub thinks the Biden family is okay. What a joke trying to shame someone else. The Biden family is an ambarrassment to our country.