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Tag: trump allies
James Comer

Trump Allies Mock (And Bully) Comer Over His Impeachment Flop

As he closes in on the Republican nomination, Donald Trump needs House Republicans to deliver an equalizer for him in the general election: an impeachment of President Joe Biden.

But after a yearlong investigation led by the House oversight committee chair, Rep. James Comer, Republicans seem no closer to digging up any actionable dirt on Biden. That leads to two conclusions:

  1. If the pro-Trump House GOP conference hasn't found anything on Biden, it's unlikely anything legally actionable exists.
  2. It becomes even more imperative for House Republicans to scrape together something Trump can work with.

After all, when pundits call him the twice-impeached, four-time indictee, Trump has to be able to point at Biden and say he's the one who's really corrupt. Just look at what Congress found on him. It's very reminiscent of Trump attempting to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into opening a bogus investigation into Biden. Only now, Trump has so many legal liabilities, he needs more than just the specter of wrongdoing—he needs the goods. And according to some fascinating reporting from The Messenger's Stephen Neukam, Trump has taken note of the fact that he's currently got nothing on which to spin a corruption narrative.

“Comer has cast a wide net and caught very little fish. That is a big problem for him,” one ally of Trump told The Messenger.

The reporting is informed by more than a dozen anonymous interviews, including a House Republican colleague who calls Comer's inquiry a "parade of embarrassments."

“One would be hard pressed to find the best moment for James Comer in the Oversight Committee,” the GOP lawmaker said.

But in many ways, the leaks seem specifically designed to put Comer on notice that he not only needs to produce, but he'll be singularly on the hook if he doesn't.

“James Comer continues to embarrass himself and House Republicans. He screws up over and over and over," said a source identified as "close" to House GOP leadership, who appeared to be playing CYA for the leadership team. The source's big fear was that Comer would ultimately fail to provide the foundation necessary (i.e. evidence) to follow through with impeaching Biden.

“I don’t know how Republicans actually impeach the president based on [Comer's] clueless investigation and lack of leadership,” said the source.

The quotes had the feel of a failed campaign staff pointing fingers at each other as the ship goes down, only the campaign in this case is the Republican effort to impeach Biden.

Publicly, of course, House leaders are expressing full confidence in Comer.

"I am grateful for the superb efforts of Chairman Comer," Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement, while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Comer had "worked tirelessly" on the investigation.

But Comer's misfires have become legendary: providing nothing substantive, just a series of accusations and innuendo that don't amount to a hill of beans. In fact, Comer's investigation has become a punch line in the media. As Daily Kos' Mark Sumner wrote in November, Comer had uncovered another "smoking water pistol."

In fact, just last month, CNN's Jake Tapper mocked Comer during a live interview.

And when the oversight committee met earlier this month to debate holding Hunter Biden in contempt for refusing to give closed-door testimony, the younger Biden made a laughingstock of House Republicans by staging a surprise press conference in which he volunteered to provide public testimony.

“It seems like they got played by Hunter Biden,” a senior House GOP aide told The Messenger. “It was a disaster. They looked like buffoons.”

To sum up, the boss needs production, Comer has become a national joke, and the House leadership is happily hanging him out to dry.

In response, Comer issued a statement through a spokesperson saying that House Oversight, along with the Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, are coordinating to "determine whether President Biden's conduct warrants articles of impeachment."

Yeah, that's not gonna cut it.

"You have to start producing," one Trump ally said. "The base is starting to get more and more frustrated with him because they see all this smoke but they don’t see the movement.”

If that sounds like a mob-boss threat, that’s because it is.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Document Scandal Grows

As Trump Document Scandal Grows, His Allies 'Go Dark' And Pull Away

Former President Donald Trump’s allies are reportedly becoming more apprehensive about defending him in wake of the Federal Bureau of Investigations' (FBI) latest search warrant executed at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

On August 12, Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey appeared on MSNBC where he weighed in on the latest development.

“As people around him have learned more details about the extent of what he was keeping there, and the various efforts behind the scenes to get them, short of a search warrant, alarm has grown in recent days when you talk to advisers of the former president,” Dawsey said during the Friday discussion.

He went on to suggest that he believes their decision to distance themselves from Trump may be a permanent one.

“Some of them are starting to go dark," he said adding, "and to stay as far away from this as they can.”

Dawsey also noted that many of Trump's allies may be unaware of what type of documents he may have had in his position which only adds more concern about what has transpired.

Per HuffPost, the search warrant, which took place on Monday, August 8, resulted in FBI agents confiscating 20 boxes of documents from Trump's estate. The documents are said to have included "11 sets of classified information, from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and resort in Florida, according to the warrant and property receipt used by the FBI to conduct the search."

Dawsey's interview follows a federal magistrate judge's decision to unseal the documents after receiving a request from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Per the news outlet, "some of the seized classified information was highly sensitive and top secret, designated to remain only in a secure government facility."

The search warrant is also said to have indicated that the former president is being investigated for possibly violating the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice, and the removal and destroying official go rnment documents. However, no further details about the investigation have been provided.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump Allies Scheming To

Trump Allies Scheme To 'Counterprogram' January 6 Panel Hearings

The bipartisan House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has scheduled prime-time hearings for next week, during which the committee is expected to lay out many of its findings regarding former President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election. Headed into that process, news outlets must prepare themselves to treat the response by Trump’s right-wing media allies as another component of that coup plot, which culminated in the storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters — not as mere political messaging.

Axios reported Thursday night, “Scoop: Trumpworld plots January 6 counterprogramming blitz,” outlining coordinated plans by Trump and his allies, including conservative groups and members of the House Republican leadership, for a real-time public relations effort to respond to the committee’s proceedings. This will include efforts to deploy misleading pro-Trump commentary on media platforms such as Fox News, Steve Bannon’s show, and Facebook, along with op-ed pieces written by members of Congress, and conservative influencers on social media.

But while Axios documented the coordinated messaging operation against an investigation into a major attack on America’s democratic process, the outlet also made a major mistake by focusing its coverage in terms of a political horse race — rather than in terms of an entire political party covering up a coup, as noted by Crooked Media editor-in-chief Brian Beutler.


That’s Not “Why It Matters”

This problem became especially obvious in the “Why it matters” section of Axios’ piece:

Why it matters: Republicans face a daunting challenge in the coming messaging war. The committee has been building toward this moment for months, hoping to use the blockbuster summer hearings to paint a vivid picture of how close Trump and his supporters came to subverting democracy.

Further bullet points added that Republicans would argue the committee is “a partisan fishing expedition,” and that this framing “will be central to their hopes of defanging whatever negative revelations come to light during the hearings.” Axios left unremarked, however, the idea that a political party’s leadership in a functioning constitutional republic should not want to “defang” revelations about an actual coup attempt.

Axios also reported that one of the point people on this media operation will be Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who will “seek to hammer the message that the committee ‘lacks merit and legitimacy’ and is hyperpartisan.” The article failed to note, however, that Jordan was also an active participant in the plot to overturn the election, having met with Trump in late December 2020 to discuss efforts to reject the counting of the Electoral College votes. He was also revealed months ago to have advocated for then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally refuse to count electoral votes in text messages with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the days before the Capitol insurrection. (In texts from the morning of January 6 released yesterday by CNN, Meadows replied to Jordan, “I have pushed for this. Not sure it is going to happen.”)

Fox News Pushing GOP Talking Points To Undermine Hearings

The right-wing media campaign against next week’s hearings has already started on Fox News, the network that helped to foment Trump’s efforts to subvert the election results and has since attacked the committee’s previous hearings, painting an alternate reality about the attack on the Capitol.

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner hosted Jordan on Tuesday’s edition of The Faulkner Focus, providing him with a platform to attack the committee as allegedly being “political” — as if Jordan’s previous attempt to subvert a national election, and the wider House Republican efforts to obstruct any investigation into the events, were somehow apolitical.

Later in the interview, Jordan complained that the committee’s attempt to subpoena him was really an effort to “play the politics.” Faulkner seemingly agreed, saying that “if they’re serious, they’ll respond” to Jordan’s concerns, “and then you’re actually having a conversation. Right now, it’s just running around.”

Then, in a truly outrageous moment on Wednesday, Faulkner opined to House Minority Leader McCarthy (R-CA) about the need for a 9/11 Commission-style inquiry, “where everybody had a voice.”

“Everybody would want to participate in that, I would think,” Faulkner said. “Is it too late?”

“Remember, Republicans and myself came out right after January asking for that type of situation,” McCarthy said, falsely claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had “said no.”

In fact, McCarthy opposed a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol attack, following public opposition by Trump, and then Senate Republicans blocked the Democrats’ proposal to establish such a committee.

Mainstream media outlets have an important job ahead of them. The coming right-wing media blitz against next week’s January 6 committee hearings is not merely part of some political horse race, but an active effort by conspirators to justify themselves and discredit anyone trying to expose them.

In the face of such an onslaught, media outlets should treat this “counterprogramming” not as a matter of partisan messaging, but as an intrinsic component of an attack against democracy in America — both by Trump and his allies in Congress, as well as from any other media outlets that gladly play host to it.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Kris Kobach

Trump Ally Kobach Marketed Dubious Product That ‘Kills COVID’ To Kansas Legislators

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Back in October, far-right Republican Kris Kobach — Kansas' former secretary of state and a "birther" who promoted the racist conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama wasn't really born in the United States — promoted a device he claimed would fight COVID-19. But a two-month investigation by the Columbia Journalism Review, according to the Kansas Reflector, showed nothing to verify Kobach's claims.

Kobach, along with his business partner, Daniel Drake — the CEO of MoJack Distributors in Wichita — made a sales pitch to Kansas legislators in October. Drake described the product as a "revolutionary" device that would "kill COVID" and claimed it would bring "several hundred jobs back to Wichita."

Kobach told Kansas legislators, "This stuff is very cutting-edge," saying that he wanted to give them the "first bite at the apple" and noting that the product was part of a new line called Sarus System.

"The former, controversial secretary of state and his new business partner made sweeping claims before the (Kansas) Legislature about the efficacy of Sarus Systems' products, but experts say the claims were misleading," Kansas Reflector reporters Jeremy Fassler and Nia Yancopoulos explain. "After a two-month investigation, Columbia Journalism School was unable to verify the vast majority of their statements."

Fassler and Yancopoulos continue, "There is no evidence Sarus Systems has made material steps toward rehoming hundreds of jobs to Kansas, and shipping records show products are currently being manufactured in China. There is also scant evidence their machines, or ozone in general, can safely eliminate SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And while the pair have hyped the products' popularity, claiming a three-month backlog and international interest, we were unable to verify any purchases — from the State of Kansas or otherwise."

In October 2020, Fassler and Yancopoulos note, Drake claimed that his product did more to fight COVID-19 than common household cleaners — saying, "Our product actually kills COVID, SARS-CoV-2, everywhere, everywhere, it can touch. So, it kills the underneath of the desk, top of the desk, the underneath of the chair, the air in the room, the cracks and crevices in the keyboards. It does a 100% super deep clean job that even a human couldn't do."

In Kansas, Kobach is infamous not only for his birtherism, but also, for his voter suppression efforts. The former Kansas secretary of state ran for governor in 2018 but lost to centrist Democrat Laura Kelly, who is now Kansas' governor, by 5%.