The cosmic ineptitude of House Republicans’ Biden impeachment inquiry

The 1962 New York Mets, an expansion team, set the gold standard for baseball ineptitude by winning only 40 of 160 games. One player, Marv Throneberry, became a legend by hitting a clean triple yet still being called out because he failed to touch first base on his way to third. Of the team’s 45 players, 19 never played another season in the majors.  

The Republican majority on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability are proving to be the 1962 Mets of congressional investigations, and that may be unfair to the team.

In their first hearing of their impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, which Republicans claimed involved “the biggest corruption scandal” in a century, the majority called constitutional law expert Professor Jonathan Turley. Turley testified that he did “not believe that the current evidence” justified impeachment, which led committee member Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to call him a “crappy witness.”

The Republicans heavily promoted the “very crucial piece” of their case, which was the unverified claim by FBI informant Alexander Smirnov that Joe and Hunter Biden had each taken $5 million in bribes from a Ukrainian company. That did not work out well when the Department of Justice indicted Smirnov for lying to the FBI and alleged that Smirnov had fabricated the bribery claim.

Republicans responded by insisting that their impeachment inquiry was “not reliant” on Smirnov, after all.  Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), a former prosecutor who recently left Congress, criticized his fellow Republicans for “touting how significant this was without knowing the reliability of the testimony.”

At their most recent hearing, Republicans called two of Hunter Biden’s former business associates. One was Trump supporter Tony Bobulinski, who testified that the Chinese Communist Party had infiltrated the Obama White House through then vice-president Joe Biden. But then Bobulinski has a penchant for strange claims, as shown by his transcribed interview before the Oversight Committee.

During the interview, Bobulinski insisted that Wall Street Journal reporters, his former business partners, FBI agents and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchison had all lied about his statements and conduct or about Joe Biden.

Bobulinski claimed that Hutchinson had lied in her book, “Enough,” with her claim that Bobulinski had worn a ski mask at a secret meeting in Georgia with Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows. In response, Hutchinson produced a photograph that her lawyer said showed Bobulinski wearing a ski mask at that meeting.  

The other Republican witness, Jason Galanis, who once owned the nation’s largest payment processor for internet pornography, needed special video arrangements to testify because he is serving a 14-year prison sentence for, among other crimes, defrauding a Native America tribe. One federal judge had characterized him as “charming, manipulative and flat-out lying to people.” The investigating Republicans nonetheless Zoomed him into the hearing for testimony that provided no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.

Fox News host Jessica Tarlov called the inquiry “embarrassing,” saying that she was surprised that Republicans have “this high of a threshold for humiliation.”

The Oversight Committee needs a face-saving exit ramp because there aren’t enough House Republican votes to impeach. But this mess cannot be face-saved. Some Republicans have talked up a criminal referral of Biden to the Department of Justice, but if the hearings have proven anything, it is that there are no crimes to refer. 

The hapless 1962 Mets ended their season by hitting into a triple play. Their colorful septuagenarian manager, Casey Stengel, said, “Been in this game one-hundred years, but I see new ways to lose ’em I never knew existed before.” That nicely sums up the House Republicans’ Biden impeachment inquiry.

Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. His book, Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia, was just published by St. Martin’s Press.