This week featured two congressional hearings that gutted what remains of the lies built up around President Joe Biden — that he did nothing wrong regarding his son’s business interests, and never censored free speech.
The first lie died in a hearing Wednesday of the House Oversight Committee, where two whistleblowers — both career IRS officials, one a gay Democrat — came forward to expose interference in the Hunter Biden probe.
As Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler detailed how Hunter Biden had evaded punishment for years of unpaid taxes while officials dithered, prosecutors tipped off defense lawyers, and the statue of limitations ran out, the Democrats were — for once — at a loss. Normally, its the Republicans who look disorganized and incompetent in such hearings, even when they have a good case to make. This time, however, it was “Democrats in disarray.”
The ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), seemed determined to make the case that it was all just a misunderstanding — that prosecutors frequently disagree with investigative agents about whether to charge suspects.
But he ran into the facts: the whole reason the witnesses were there was that prosecutors had, in fact, agreed to charge Hunter Biden with felonies, only to be waved off amid blatant interference with the inquiry.
RASKIN: "It seems to me this meeting…which you've described as a red line, is just a misunderstanding!"
IRS WHISTLEBLOWER SHAPLEY: "That's not supported by the facts."
RASKIN: "Really? Which facts is that not supported by?!"
IRS WHISTLEBLOWER SHAPLEY: "Uh, his own… pic.twitter.com/oFwLydhVL6
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 19, 2023
At one point, the smug Dep. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) — heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, former Adam Smith henchman, and Principal Rooney lookalike — tried to clam that just because Joe Biden had been at a meeting with his son’s business associates, that didn’t mean he was part of the business itself.
Not only was that a blunt admission that Biden lied about not knowing about his son’s businesses, but it was false: Joe was the business.
Rep. Goldman just tripped the wire on Joe Biden. In trying to grill the whistleblowers to show that there is no evidence that Joe Biden was involved, he elicited an answer that the witnesses established that Joe Biden did discuss business deals of Hunter with the Chinese…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) July 19, 2023
The IRS agents made clear that they were prevented from investigating Hunter Biden for a variety of other possible violations, including human trafficking (and, in an earlier deposition, failing to register as a foreign agent). Toward the end of the hearing, Democrats were reduced to accusing Republicans of racism for using the phrase “two tiers of justice.” Any sane Democrat watching the proceeding had to know it was a lost cause.
Then, on Thursday, the House Weaponization Subcommittee heard testimony from witnesses who had been targeted by government censorship: Breitbart News Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris, whose story for the New York Post in 2020 on the Hunter Biden laptop was suppressed on social media; and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been a victim of censorship and a smear campaign by his own party.
Democrats spent most of their time attacking Kennedy. In a comically ironic moment, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) tried to end the public hearing, which would have meant censoring a forum on censorship. She then attacked Kennedy as a racist and antisemite and interupted him when he tried to respond.
But the worst damage came when Goldman attacked Morris, in the process admitting the Hunter Biden laptop was “real.”
That ended the fantasy that the laptop might be fake, or that the FBI might have had good reason to tell social media companies to censor it. Later Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released the FBI’s FD-1023 form on Biden, revealing the agency knew the allegations against Hunter Biden were legitimate long before the laptop went public.
The lies are dead. Democrats will have to face the truth about Biden — now, or at the ballot box.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
