OPINION:
A triumvirate of Republican-led House committees in August put out a report that makes the case for impeaching outgoing President Biden.
“The totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the Committees is egregious,” panels on Oversight, Judiciary and Ways & Means wrote. “President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift. In doing so, he abused his office and, by repeatedly lying about his abuse of office, has defrauded the United States to enrich his family.”
His “family” principally his son Hunter, who teamed with Vice President Biden to collect millions from shady foreigners in Ukraine, Romania, Russia, China and other oppressive places.
Now Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the Oversight chair and the Republican face of impeachment, has recaptured the probe in a book, “All The President’s Money.” It’s wordplay for the 1974 Woodward-Bernstein book on Watergate-ruined Richard Nixon, “All The President’s Men.”
Mr. Comer details the money trail. For example, how Vice President Biden in 2014 got named overseer for Russia and Ukraine. And then presto, Hunter and his investment buddy, Devon Archer, win million-dollar seats on the board of Burisma, a natural gas conglomerate. The owner happens to be a Russian ally. But it doesn’t matter. A Burisma agent tells Hunter he wants an end to a local prosecutor’s Burisma investigation. And sure enough, Joe gets the guy fired on a threat of withholding American money.
What I found entertaining about Mr. Comer’s memoir is his salty, unflattering profiles of adversaries.
Take, for example, his combat with Oversight ranking member Jamie Raskin, a diehard Washington suburb liberal and Biden loyalist. Mr. Comer writes he approached Rep. Jim Jordan, Judiciary chair, about swapping Mr. Raskin for the waddling Rep. Jerry Nadler.
“I told Jordan that I despised Raskin so much I would trade ranking members with him,” Mr. Comer writes. “I would rather smell sh— for five straight hours than listen to Jamie Raskin lie like a dog! To properly understand that juxtaposition, you need to ride in an elevator for a few floors with Jim Jordan’s ranking member, Jerry Nadler.”
Mr. Nadler appears again in the recap of the February 2024 deposition of Hunter Biden, as does Rep. Eric Swalwell. He yelled a demand for an instant transcript.
“Swalwell then popped off one of his usual smart-ass remarks demanding the terms he wanted, and I quickly snapped back, ‘I don’t care what you want, Eric.’ As I was attempting to restore order, Judiciary ranking member Jerry Nadler, who had already filled the room with his signature essence, Eau de Truck Stop Restroom, swelled with emotion (or something equally noxious) and cried forth, ‘Well, I care!’”
Mr. Comer describes Hunter’s arrival, accompanied by high-powered attorney Abbe Lowell.
“There is a metaphysical slouch to Hunter Biden. He somehow always manages to make even his smartly tailored suits look shabby, like he’s leaking shame into them. He wore a tie whose color might as well have been a symbol for his soul. Puce.”
Mr. Comer profiled Washington fixture Lowell as akin to the unethical lawyer played by Bob Odenkirk in two critically acclaimed original TV series.
Mr. Lowell, he writes, “bears a striking resemblance to the wily Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul in more ways than mere looks.”
There is also this depiction of Hunter’s 2023 press appearance outside the Capitol, during which he refused to answer questions.
“If anybody in this country was a privileged princeling along the lines of the ancient pharaohs’ sons,” he writes, “and the ‘red-blood’ brood of the murderous Chinese Communist Party upper class, it was Hunter Biden.”
Mr. Comer used Hunter’s presser to describe Washington’s anti-Republican news media (“journalist groupies”) and their long devotion to Joe Biden.
“Hunter Biden walked up to the mic. All of D.C. liberal mainstream media stood trembling, waiting for his words. What wisdom would their beloved president’s prodigal git utter? They felt so sorry for him. Here was Hunter, an unwitting victim of drug abuse and bad judgment. It was a disease, not a choice! At least that’s the way it was for Hunter.”
There is a Bob Woodward scene. Mr. Woodward interviewed Mr. Comer for his book on Joe Biden. Mr. Comer relates this conversation: “Woodward explained that everyone in DC knew that Joe allowed his family to sell access to him, but as far as he was aware, that was not illegal. He added that it should be, but it wasn’t. ‘You will have to prove all of Joe Biden’s wrongdoing,’ he said, ‘and you will likely not be able to do that.’”
Mr. Woodward disputes that he said Mr. Biden sells access.
Mr. Comer also targeted his own House caucus as a bunch of leakers.
He writes, “I often joke that I am not going to bother going to the next conference meeting because I can just sit in my office and follow the Twitter posts of Olivia Beavers and Juliegrace Brufke—basically political gossip columnists with Politico and Axios, respectively—to get a play-by-play of every word spoken in the conference. The thing was, Olivia and Juliegrace were about the only two reporters in the D.C. press corps that most Republicans liked, much less trusted. Members would sometimes clandestinely call straight to their cell phones so they could hear everything said in our closed-door, private conferences.”
There you have “All The President’s Money: Investigating The Secret Foreign Schemes That Made The Biden Family Rich.” By Jim Comer, unleashed.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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