Same Old Same Old

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Let me flag something to your attention. For the better part of two weeks the national press was consumed by House Republican claims that there was a cover-up in the investigation of the President’s son Hunter Biden and that the investigation had essentially been shut down by DOJ political appointees. According to a purported IRS whistleblower, U.S. Attorney David Weiss had been turned down when he requested special counsel status. His efforts to bring additional and more serious charges against the younger Biden were thwarted. Just as it seemed that the whole saga had come to a conclusion, suddenly it was ramping back up again, despite very little evidence that any of the claims were true.

The claims centered on Weiss, who was now put forward as a sort of muzzled, reluctant whistleblower. Weiss, remember, was appointed by President Trump and left in place by the Biden Justice Department to avoid any appearance of an attempt to interfere with the Hunter Biden investigation. But now Weiss has stated unambiguously that none of these claims are true. He never requested to become special counsel (which is itself kind of an absurd suggestion) and he was never blocked from bringing any charges or investigating aspects of the Hunter Biden case. This comes in response to a set of questions posed by Sen. Lindsey Graham and contained in a letter obtained by CNN.

Now the same House Republicans are forced to claim that the purportedly muzzled and overruled Weiss is actually a liar and in fact in on the broader cover-up.

Perhaps it’s true that Weiss, a respected career prosecutor who was actually appointed by Donald Trump, is in fact a central player in covering up the corruption of the ‘Biden Crime Family,’ as Republicans now routinely put it. But to think so is to insist, albeit tacitly, that only an investigation that validated House Republicans’ wild and evidence-free hyperbole could ever be legitimate.

It’s the same old story: a new set of wildly improbable Republican claims, advanced with no evidence, drive the national news cycle for weeks before predictably being shown to be baseless.

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