Innocent until proven guilty
House Republicans ramp up claims Biden family received money from foreign contacts
By A. Altieri D’Angelo
The Republicans in the House of Representatives have pledged that they would prove the Biden family has accepted bribes and engaged in influence peddling. They have launched a significant investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden family. The Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, has led the attack. On Wednesday, May 10th, the Chairman released his finding to date. And it was a big nothing. He and his committee could not present evidence that Joe Biden and his family engaged in influence peddling for personal gain or that they committed any crimes. And in the U.S., you are considered innocent until proven guilty. The Comer Committee is the joke of the U.S. Capital.
The Comer Report (the Report) highlighted that some members of the Biden family had received over $10 million in fees over 15 years. The House panel focused on two sources of payments: CEFEC -China Energy Co, and Gabriel Popoviciu. The Comer Report provides few details and no smoking guns. It states that the Biden family’s and associates' activities in Romania bear clear indicia of a scheme to peddle influence from 2015 to 2017, saying that while Biden was vice president, his son Hunter, through an associate, received more than $1 million from a company controlled by a Romanian official accused of corruption. (In 2016, Popoviciu, a Romanian business executive, was convicted of fraud and corruption in his home country.)
The Comer memo also says the Biden family’s and associates’ “activities in coordination with Chinese nationals and their corporate entities appear to be an attempt to engage in financial deception". Comer had issued a similar charge in March when he alleged that the President’s son and at least two other relatives were paid $1.3 million by an associate of Hunter Biden, who had been wired $3 million from a Chinese energy company that was affiliated with Hunter Biden had been doing business with.
(There was no indication that Joe Biden played any role in his son's dealings in China.)
The general reaction of the new media was that Comer's Report was not credible. The Report does not claim that Joe Biden or his family engaged in unlawful activities. Comer used innuendo to raise suspicions and to feed his political base with unfounded charges. But Comer produced no evidence of influence peddling.
Steve Doocy, a host of the morning show “Fox & Friends,” which is an extremely friendly news network to Republicans, discussed the matter with Chairman Comer. He indicated the evidence was not convincing. Doocy stated, “You don’t actually have any facts to that point,” “And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is — there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”
Other right-wing supporters and commentators were very critical of Comer and his Report. A well-known Trump supporter, Sebastian Gorka, stated, “I’m not impressed with James Comer’s Biden bombshell.” Another Fox News Commentator, Geraldo Rivera, said Comer and colleagues were “struggling to find direct evidence of criminal conduct or corruption.” He said the investigators need to “put up … or shut up.”
Since Comer did not have any hard evidence, he tried to rationalize his claims by stating, “We’ve never seen a presidential family receive these sums of money from adversaries around the world — we’re just talking about a couple of countries today”.
Comer also tried to suggest Biden was putting the nation at risk. He said, “I want to be clear: This committee is investigating President Biden and his family’s shady business deals that capitalize on Joe Biden’s public office and risked our country’s national security … We believe that the president has been involved in this from the very beginning, obviously,” Comer again failed to provide support for this claim.
A Republican Senator, Ron Johnson, stepped in to support Comer by saying, “People that commit criminal acts try not to leave a paper trail.” So, the lack of anything incriminating merely proves that the Bidens were very good criminals! “You have to infer these things,” Johnson told Fox Business. “You’re not necessarily going to get necessarily hard proof.” (A U.S. Senator implies you are guilty unless you prove your innocence. Unbelievable!)
What is incredibly hypocritical about Republicans investigating Biden is their unwillingness to do the same to the Trump family or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. There is no doubt that Donald Trump and the rest of the Trump family made millions while Trump was in office. The Trump Hotel in Washington was the place to be if you wanted a favor from the Trumps. Harlan Crow, a conservative Republican donor, has supported Justice Thomas financially. Was there a quid pro quo?
The U.S. needs better laws governing influence peddling by politicians and their families. But until the law changes, everyone must be considered innocent until proven guilty.
James Comer said he was informed by an anonymous informant of Joe Biden's involvement in an illegal scheme with a foreigner. But the informant is missing…