Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new House Oversight Committee Chairman who lamented this week that President Joe Biden’s dead son was never prosecuted in a long-settled campaign financing case, has now tried to claim he said no such thing.
In an appearance on former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs’ podcast on Tuesday, Comer bemoaned that U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, a Trump-era appointee, never indicted Beau Biden in a campaign financing scandal in which Biden was cleared of wrongdoing.
That scandal involved contributions made by Delaware liquor executive Christopher Tigani during the 2000s, including to Joe Biden’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign. But Beau Biden, the former Delaware attorney general who died of a brain tumor in 2015, recused himself from a state probe into the matter, and an independent special prosecutor found that the Bidens, among other lawmakers, had unknowingly received straw donations. Tigani was eventually convicted.
“This U.S. attorney had had an opportunity to go after the Bidens years ago,” Comer huffed to Dobbs, after insinuating that Weiss was overly sympathetic to the entire Biden family. “In fact, it was Beau Biden, the president’s other son, that was involved in some campaign donations from a person that got indicted, as well as Joe Biden was involved in some of these campaign donations when he was a senator, and then when he ran for president against Obama.”
He continued: “But nothing ever happened. So I don’t know much about this U.S. attorney other than he’s had an opportunity to investigate the Bidens before and he chose not to. We all know that he’s just been silent for a long time.”
But when Comer was cornered by a reporter from The Independent at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, he angrily denied making the comment at all, claiming he was simply pointing out that Weiss “had an opportunity to look into Joe Biden for campaign contributions” and that Beau was attorney general at the time.
“You need to watch the tape, that is a lie—the White House said that, that is not true,” he told The Independent.
“I just said he was attorney general during a case … Lou Dobbs asked about the attorney, the U.S. Attorney in Delaware. And I said, all we know is … there was one opportunity… he had an opportunity to look into Joe Biden for campaign contributions. He didn’t, [and] the person that made the contributions was sent to jail, Beau Biden was attorney general at the time, and nothing happened. I never said anything negative about Joe Biden, and I never said Joe Biden should be indicted, which is what the White House said—that’s a complete lie.”
In fact, the White House said Wednesday that Comer’s invocation of the president’s dead son was “completely inappropriate” and “ugly.”
When The Independent pointed out that Beau recused himself from any involvement in the Tigani matter, and was cleared of wrongdoing, Comer shot back, “So what’s your point?”
Despite claiming he’s not interested in digging into any Bidens but the president, Comer has obsessed over the president’s other son, Hunter Biden, who has also been in Weiss’ crosshairs since 2018. Weiss is reportedly looking into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs and is close to wrapping up the case.
