McCarthy Vows Congress Will Pursue Conspiracy Theories On Biden, COVID, And The FBI

House Republicans voted 188-31 on Tuesday to nominate McCarthy for House speaker. He will need 218 votes to win the job in January.

Politicoreported Wednesday that Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) had told Fox News that they are planning investigations into Hunter Biden's business dealings and into whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are biased against Republicans.

"We are going to make it very clear that this is now an investigation of President Biden," Comer told the network.

Before the election, McCarthy had downplayed his caucus' plans to politicize the oversight process. In a September 29 press conference, he said they would not do to Biden what Democrats had done to twice-impeached former President Donald Trump.

"We just went through four years of watching a political impeachment," he said. "We will uphold the law. We will not play politics with it. But we'll do whatever in the nature that the rules and facts take us to."

But in a secretly recorded video taken by the Undercurrent's Lauren Windsor in October, Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona promised that under a Republican majority, "Jim Jordan, when he chairs the Oversight Committee, will spend 240 days knifing the Biden administration."

In 2015, McCarthy bragged to Hannity that their duplicative investigations into a 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, had achieved their true purpose: hurting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's political prospects.

"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping," he said. "Why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought and made that happen."

Much of the GOP's midterm election rhetoric was focused on the economy and consumer prices.

And while exit polling indicated that those issues, along with abortion rights, public safety, and gun violence were the most important to voters, House Republicans are making clear that they intend to focus much of their effort on something that was not a priority for any significant segment of voters.

Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, an outside group focused on defending the Biden administration, said in a press release on Thursday that Comer and Jordan had revealed "House Republicans' true intentions – politically motivated investigations into President Biden, his family, and his cabinet. Instead of addressing the issues that affect the American people the most, they are acting like Donald Trump and pushing their radical MAGA Republican agenda."