Can GOP House Investigations Nail Biden and Democrats?

For all their disagreements about who should be speaker of the House, or on ideological or procedural issues, there was one thing on which virtually every member of the freshly minted House Republican caucus agreed - now that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have left the building. That is investigations, investigations - and more investigations. Presumptive Speaker Kevin McCarthy came out with guns blazing the day after Republicans finally clinched their House majority with a voluminous list of potential crimes committed by Joe Biden, described by Dana Perino on Fox News as like “a double shot of espresso.”

Indeed, McCarthy and the GOP promise to look deeply into the Joe Biden laptop (yes, it’s all about Joe, not Hunter) and the extreme influence-peddling by the Biden family inherent in its contents. But that’s hardly the end of it. The new House majority, frustrated by four years of powerlessness at the hands of a Democratic Party in a perpetual state of investigation and impeachment of Donald Trump, has already launched a probe into the “weaponization of the federal government.” Their docket going forward includes deep dives into the metastasizing border crisis, the Afghanistan debacle, social media censorship and collusion with the Democrats, the origins of COVID-19, the conduct of the Jan. 6 Committee. The list will likely lengthen with ironic newfound revelations of Biden, not Trump, holding classified documents in multiple unsecured locations - before he was president.

GOP House Investigations and Big Media

But will these investigations be conducted primarily out of necessity, political opportunism, or revenge? The answer likely includes all three elements. In addition, the outlook for passing any serious legislation into law is bleak with Democrats in control of the Senate, leaving a vacuum in the GOP agenda that they will gladly fill with any number of probes into Biden, his party and his appointees, from Attorney General Merrick Garland and his FBI to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, against whom articles of impeachment have already been filed.

But no matter the Republicans’ motivation, given the undeniable leftward tilt of big media and their proven eagerness to explain away all of Biden’s many vulnerabilities, will any of the revelations from these probes amount to anything more than a boatload of evidence in search of a verdict that will never be delivered to the voters? Elite media coverage of the Republicans’ investigative plans has largely focused on how these investigations are politically motivated - imagine that - and by discredited MAGA apostles no less, and how left-wing attack dogs like David Brock are planning an aggressive independent defense of this president.

Democrats and their sycophants in the media will further focus on all the progressive legislation promised and passed by the last Congress - running the national debt to an unconscionable $32 trillion - before the GOP took over and stalled progress towards a fundamentally transformed society with all their needless investigative plans. The notion of explaining why more than a dozen specific and credible allegations against the sitting president will be investigated is of no interest to these partisans posing as journalists – a complete about-face from the four years when Trump was president.

What exactly will Republicans do when subpoenas are inevitably ignored by those called to testify before a House committee? They can hold uncooperative witnesses in contempt, but that charge has no real legal teeth. Technically, they could arrest the defiant person through their own Sergeant-at-Arms or file a lawsuit to get a judge to order compliance – or ask the DOJ to criminally prosecute. But the first two options would be depicted as politically explosive by big media, and with Merrick Garland calling the shots at the Department of Justice, the chances of the third option are exactly zero.

It hardly matters that the last speaker of the House elevated pure partisan politics to new heights during and since the Trump administration. One might believe that Republicans have every right - and duty - to follow suit in the same hallowed chamber that was turned into a star chamber by Nancy Pelosi and the Jan. 6 Committee with their glitzy Hollywood production masquerading as an impartial hearing. And let’s not forget her lovely parting gift, opening a forever-closed Pandora’s box by releasing Trump’s tax returns. But none of that will deter the smear merchants and agents of the state chomping at the bit to scandalize the GOP investigation train before it leaves the station. So, voters deliberately kept in the dark about the Biden/Democrat scandals will be on their own to discern the truth, because you can rest assured they won’t get it from the media.