House Republicans’ Biden 'bombshell' keeps failing to materialize: analysis

02 August 2023

While former President Donald Trump faces three criminal indictments, many Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives remain fixated on someone else: President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden. Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and his colleagues have been alleging that President Joe Biden took a bribe from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which Hunter Biden represented as a lobbyist.

But the Washington Post's Philip Bump, in his August 1 column, emphasizes that "despite Comer's claim," that allegation "is not becoming more credible every day."

"In fact, it is no more credible now than it was in early May, when Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first introduced it," Bump argues. "But (Fox News' Sean) Hannity and Comer have a vested interest in presenting the allegation as credible and a vested interest in suggesting that closed-door testimony from one of…. Hunter's former business partners, Devon Archer, added to that credibility."

Bump adds that "there has been no evidence tying Joe Biden to Hunter Biden's work" for Burisma "in any concrete way." And testimony from Archer, according to Bump, hasn't buried the Bidens the way House Republicans have promised.

"The bombshell that was promised from Archer's testimony was that Hunter Biden would sporadically call his dad while in the presence of business partners, again to reinforce his purported access," Bump explains. "But this comports with the idea that Hunter Biden was selling this perception. The lack of evidence looping President Biden into any business decisions or profit, despite years of searching, undercuts the insinuation that Biden was corrupted by these calls. Comer and Jordan are often left simply insisting that Biden's past denials of involvement are eroded by his having taken his son's calls."

Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).

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