by House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) grimly insisted Tuesday afternoon that he never linked his committee’s investigation into the Biden family to former President Donald Trump’s poll numbers.
Of course, the day before, Comer literally said that “Donald Trump is seven points ahead” of President Joe Biden because the “American people are watching our investigation.”
Comer, whose anti-Biden investigation has so far turned up “hard evidence” linking Biden to any corruption, was even criticized by Fox News recently for his inability to provide any evidence to back up his lofty promises of a big-time criminal. scheme involving the president. Furthermore, Comer left even angrier after claiming that one of the informants in his investigation had “disappeared”.
appearing in Fox and his friends first On Monday morning, Comer said he was making real progress with his investigation, prompting co-host Ashley Strohmier to note that a conservative columnist recently wrote that the mainstream press could no longer ignore the investigation.
“So you think, because of your investigation, that’s what moved this needle in the media?” asked Strohmier.
“Absolutely. There’s no question. You look at the polls and right now Donald Trump is seven points ahead of Joe Biden and trending up,” Comer replied. “Joe Biden is trending down. And I believe the media is looking around , scratching their heads and realizing that the American people are watching our investigation.”
While Comer was referencing a recent poll, as most polls suggest a close race, his welcome that investigating Biden was helping Trump’s numbers dated back to 2015 comments by then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, about the Benghazi select committee.
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, and while he was making his first run for Speaker of the House, McCarthy drew a backlash from his GOP peers when he bragged to Fox News host Sean Hannity that the goal of the Benghazi investigation was to hurt the former president politically. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Of course, Clinton would soon be the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we set up a special Benghazi committee, a select committee,” McCarthy said at the time. “What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she is unreliable [sic]. But no one would have known that none of this happened if we hadn’t fought.
That moment ended up killing McCarthy’s chances as speaker that year, likely prompting Comer to attempt a cleanup on Tuesday amid growing criticism over his own comments.
At the end of a friendly interview on Fox Business Network Conclusionco-host Dagen McDowell brought criticism from Democrats on the oversight committee, who said Comer’s “comment tells the world that these wild goose investigations are all about one thing: helping Donald Trump fight his way back into the white House.” .”
Co-host Sean Duffy, a former GOP congressman and former Trump acolyte, then joked with Comer that Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “was concerned about low poll numbers for Donald Trump” before claim that Comer was only “concerned with the truth.” The Kentucky lawmaker, meanwhile, brazenly claimed that he never mentioned Trump’s numbers on Monday.
“Look, when I was referring to poll numbers, it had nothing to do with Donald Trump,” he declared. “It had to do with the fact that the American people overwhelmingly believe that public corruption is a problem and are concerned about how Joe Biden’s family got that money from foreigners. the American people are following our investigation, it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”
In addition to Monday’s explicit link to rising poll numbers for Trump versus Biden, Comer has repeatedly linked his investigation to the political ramifications of the upcoming presidential election, as the washington post Aaron Blake recently remarked. In addition, Comer also acknowledged that it would be more politically complicated for him to investigate Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner about his foreign affairs.
Finally, this isn’t the first time Comer has tried to deny that he said something he clearly said. After lamenting that the president’s late son, Beau Biden, was never indicted in an investigation into illegal political contributions, Comer later claimed that it was “a lie” that he made those comments.
