Fox News anchor Arthel Neville took a Democratic lawyer to task on Saturday for seemingly lending credence to the Republican Party’s unproven claims that President Joe Biden benefited from a foreign influence peddling scheme via his family’s business dealings.
During an interview with Julian Epstein, the former Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee who served as Democrats’ counsel during the Clinton impeachment, Neville asked how the GOP’s investigation to impeach Biden differs from previous impeachments.
Stating that there are “similarities” and “differences,” Epstein said one similarity is that “Republicans got out in front of the facts” and started talking about impeachment “before they had the goods.” At the same time, Epstein noted that recent polls show that the majority of Americans believe Biden did something unethical or illegal as it related to his son’s businesses.
He went on to say Democrats are “not playing it well,” adding that Republicans have alleged that “Biden not only knew about it but enabled an influence-peddling scheme on the part of his son.” Calling that a “very serious matter, Epstein also expressed concern that the president may have had a hand in the “sweetheart deal” that the Justice Department attempted to do with Hunter Biden over his tax and gun charges.
“It seems impossible for me, Arthel, for Democrats to say there’s nothing here to see,” he continued. Neville, however, took the opportunity to remind her guest that Republicans have yet to present any actual evidence to back up all of their allegations before somewhat chastising him for parroting their claims.
“Well see, here you are, you’re repeating all the allegations still with hardly any evidence directly linking those dots to President Biden himself,” she declared. “So that’s, you know how that saying goes, you repeat it enough times, people begin to believe it.”
After the Fox anchor followed up by asking Epstein whether he felt the Biden impeachment investigation, which the House Republicans voted to formalize earlier this month, is justified, Epstein reversed course a bit by noting that the GOP has yet to prove their claims.
“I think … Democrats are correct—the notion the president has committed impeachable offenses—there is no evidence of that yet,” he stated. “But there is evidence the president knew about the influence-peddling scheme and has misled the public.”
Neville, who has long taken criticism from former President Donald Trump for not being sufficiently loyal to him, isn’t the only “hard news” personality at the right-wing network to note that Republicans have yet to make a valid impeachment case. Chief White House correspondent Peter Doocy delivered a bubble-piercing fact-check last week, saying the House GOP has “not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business.”
Additionally, Neville’s pushback to the GOP’s impeachment narrative comes two weeks after she cut off a Trump campaign rally to correct the ex-president’s election conspiracies, telling Fox viewers that the 2020 election was not “rigged” or “stolen.” The fact-check from Neville earned her a rebuke from MAGA media, including Steve Bannon, who called Fox News “TV for stupid people.”
