Wednesday morning’s House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing, titled “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office,” was yet another chance for Democratic Congress members to embarrass the GOP. Witness Lev Parnas, a former Rudy Giuliani associate convicted for campaign finance violations and wire fraud, told the committee that by May or June of 2019, it was clear to him and to Giuliani that the “dirt” they were digging up on then-candidate Biden was mostly lies concocted by Russian agents.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin asked Parnas, “How were you and Giuliani able to take these false allegations peddled by corrupt officials and Russian agents and promote and amplify them here in the United States, in our political system? Weren’t media groups skeptical of your claims?”
Most media groups—I’d probably say all except for Fox and a few other right-wing media groups—didn’t want to take any of the information. And that aggravated Rudy Giuliani and John Solomon and other players. And the main group that was being pushed through was Fox—Sean Hannity and some other media personalities over there. But then there was also other people that were doing the bidding for the Russians. People in Congress, like Senator Ron Johnson, like Congressman Pete Sessions, that sits here right now, that was with me from the very beginning of this journey into finding of the – – digging dirt on Joe Biden.
In just over two minutes, Raskin was able to confirm that:
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The “investigation” into the Biden family’s activities in Ukraine was a politically motivated hoax.
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Giuliani and others knew the info they were peddling came from suspicious sources “doing the bidding of” Vladimir Putin.
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Only Sean Hannity, Fox News, and other right-wing outlets were willing to unquestioningly spread the misinformation to the public.
All these pesky facts keep undermining Rep. James Comer and his Republican-led committee’s circus performances. And as shown in the video below, Fox News deals with those facts by simply cutting them off.
The president of the Center for American Progress, Patrick Gaspard, joins us to give his thoughts on what the Republican Party’s actual message is.
