Opinion | Hunter Biden is the top of Republicans’ 2023 agenda

This, at the least, is the impression given by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the man in line to turn into chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, the House’s major investigative panel. In interviews with Fox News and different public pronouncements, Comer has alleged that the president’s son is accountable for almost the whole lot.

Why is fentanyl flowing into the United States? Hunter Biden.

Why is President Biden pushing electrical automobiles? Hunter Biden.

Why isn’t the president more durable on Russian oligarchs? Hunter Biden.

Why isn’t the administration pinning the pandemic on a Wuhan lab leak and battling China over forex manipulation? Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden.

Why did the United States rejoin the Paris local weather accord? Hunter Biden.

Why did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reassure the Chinese army in the final chaotic days of the Trump administration? Again, Hunter Biden.

“Congressional Republicans plan to open up 5 avenues of investigation into Hunter Biden,” the New York Post reported final week, citing Comer’s potential panel.

The FBI and the Justice Department have undertaken a multiyear investigation into Hunter Biden’s enterprise actions. But Republicans are apparently planning on subjecting Biden père et fils to the Benghazi therapy. In that case, after no fewer than eight congressional investigations, the GOP failed to search out wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton associated to the terrorist assault in Libya — however they did uncover her personal electronic mail server.

Comer, who has vowed to be “throughout Hunter Biden,” told Fox News on April 28 that “Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s shady enterprise dealings with Russia and with China” have been answerable for drug smuggling. “China’s making a lot cash off the fentanyl that’s crossing the border. Is the motive Joe Biden has an open border as a result of of his being compromised with China?”

Actually, U.S. authorities seized 5,300 kilos of fentanyl thus far this fiscal yr and 11,200 kilos final yr alongside the supposedly “open” border — greater than double the tempo of interdiction underneath President Donald Trump.

Three weeks earlier, Comer floated another conspiracy theory on Fox News: “At the identical time that Joe Biden’s attempting to transform everybody in the United States from fossil gas to electrical automobiles, we put China in a stronger aggressive benefit over the United States in the battery market as a result of of the uncommon earth minerals, and Hunter Biden was entrance and heart in that.” In Comer’s telling, the Biden administration helps EVs to not scale back carbon emissions however as a result of Hunter Biden brokered a 2016 deal “between an American firm and a Chinese firm” over a “Congo mine with cobalt.”

Comer alleged other ways “Hunter’s shady dealings have impacted Joe Biden’s decisionmaking.” For instance: “One of the oligarchs in Russia that Hunter Biden acquired cash from” wasn’t amongst the “oligarchs who have been sanctioned by the Biden administration in Russia.” (The Post’s Fact Checker discovered that the allegation that Biden the youthful acquired funds from the oligarch is based mostly on “flimsiness.”)

Comer additionally claimed that, as a result of of Hunter Biden, Democrats gained’t “examine the origination of covid-19 in that Wuhan lab” (Biden ordered and made public an intelligence review on the matter) and “don’t need to do something towards China on the manipulation of their currency.” (Perhaps Hunter Biden additionally brought on the Trump administration to remove China’s designation as a forex manipulator in 2020.)

Comer previously proposed that Hunter Biden would have particular perception into “power firms in China or Ukraine” that “spent cash lobbying for the Paris local weather accords.”

And Comer said the “unusual relationship between Hunter Biden and China” is the solely factor that would clarify why “the administration and the deep state [would] be reaching out to their Chinese counterparts to attempt to give them warning of any potential army motion by the United States.” Never thoughts that these calls by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley occurred throughout the Trump presidency.

Now, Comer charges that “the Russian authorities is trying to affect American coverage in Ukraine by exploiting Hunter Biden’s connection together with his father.” His letter was signed by 13 other Republicans — one of 14 such releases wherein oversight committee Republicans have talked about Biden in the previous 5 weeks alone. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) additionally incessantly calls out the president’s son and has blessed the concept of probing him.

So, to recap, Hunter Biden controls cobalt in Congo, fentanyl in Mexico, coronavirus in Wuhan and warfare in Ukraine. It is only a matter of time till Republicans discover a Hunter Biden angle in Jeffrey Epstein’s demise and UFOs off the coast of California.

“Where’s Hunter?” went the common chorus at Trump rallies. Now we all know. In the Republican creativeness, Hunter is all over the place.