Yesterday we noted how a major tentpole in the House GOP’s “crime family” investigations of President Biden collapsed when U.S. Attorney David Weiss denied there was any interference in his investigation. Now we have a revelation that manages to be even more stunning while being somehow entirely predictable. We and others last month had some fun at the expense of investigative ringleader Rep. James Comer (R-KY) when he said he had “lost” what he claimed was his top Biden whistleblower. What this meant was never clear and given how things work in Republican investigations it was never certain whether it actually “meant” anything. Now we know what he meant.

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.

Ordinarily this would not be a surprising or especially newsworthy story, at least not at the national level. A controversy-tangled freshman Republican member of the Florida state House of Representatives, Fabian Basabe, has been accused of sexual harassment and some mix of unwanted touching and assault by two members of his staff. Basabe, 45, is billed as a former New York City socialite who appeared on a couple reality shows. He’s married Martina Borgomanero, the heiress to a lingerie fortune. (A very South Florida story, as you can tell — he represents Miami Beach and environs.) He was already in some hot water in his socially tolerant, gay-friendly district for voting in lockstep with state Republicans pushing Ron DeSantis’s anti-“woke”/LGBTQ agenda. The accusers are one staffer, Nicholas Frevola, 25, and one former intern, Jacob Cutbirth, 24.

As I said, not unremarkable, but bordering on a news story cliche: An apparently closeted, if in this case perhaps lightly closeted, Republican rep accused of harassing and fondling male staffers. He denies it; news at 11.

Where it gets interesting though is that the investigation by The Miami Herald and CBS News Miami strongly suggests a cover-up by the Republican leadership of the state House, specifically House Speaker Paul Renner, a key DeSantis ally.