{"id":1025029,"date":"2023-08-01T19:39:50","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T19:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/democrats.org\/?p=1025029"},"modified":"2024-05-15T18:58:51","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:58:51","slug":"icymi-washington-post-another-gop-bombshell-fails-to-detonate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-washington-post-another-gop-bombshell-fails-to-detonate\/","title":{"rendered":"ICYMI: Washington Post: Another GOP \u2018bombshell\u2019 fails to detonate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Old_War-Room-Master-File.png?w=1024\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1031705\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Key Point: <\/strong>\u201cDespite Comer\u2019s claim, though, the allegation is not becoming more credible every day. In fact, it is no more credible now than it was in early May, when Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first introduced it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2023\/08\/01\/devpn-archer-oversight-testimony\/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=wp_politics\"><strong>Washington Post<\/strong><\/a><strong>: Another GOP \u2018bombshell\u2019 fails to detonate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By Philip Bump<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Despite Comer\u2019s claim, though, the allegation is not becoming more credible every day. In fact, it is no more credible now than it was in early May, when Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first introduced it. But Hannity and Comer have a vested interest in presenting the allegation as credible and a vested interest in suggesting that closed-door testimony from one of Joe Biden\u2019s son Hunter\u2019s former business partners, Devon Archer, added to that credibility.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At this point, it does not. And to see why it does not, consider the central argument made by Comer, Hannity and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday night \u2014 an argument that is easily debunked right at the start.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To date, there has been no evidence presented tying Joe Biden to Hunter Biden\u2019s work in any concrete way, with the White House insisting that the president wasn\u2019t involved in Hunter Biden\u2019s business.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The bombshell that was promised from Archer\u2019s testimony was that Hunter Biden would sporadically call his dad while in the presence of business partners, again to reinforce his purported access. But this comports with the idea that Hunter Biden was selling this perception. The lack of evidence looping President Biden into any business decisions or profit, despite years of searching, undercuts the insinuation that Biden was corrupted by these calls. Comer and Jordan are often left simply insisting that Biden\u2019s past denials of involvement are eroded by his having taken his son\u2019s calls.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>On Hannity\u2019s show, Comer tried to build the case that, as vice president, Biden\u2019s role was more significant. He claimed that Archer \u201csaid that Hunter Biden was under immense pressure while they both served on the Burisma board to call Washington, D.C. immediately and try to get [Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor] Shokin fired. And, according to Jordan\u2019s account, five days later, Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine.\u201d Speaking to Ukraine\u2019s legislative body on Dec. 9, 2015, he demanded that Shokin be ousted.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hannity repeated the timeline for his viewers: Hunter Biden, Archer and the head of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, met with the board of the company in Dubai. They called Washington and, \u201cthen immediately thereafter,\u201d Biden headed for Ukraine. Comer agreed, saying that \u201cthey were pressuring Hunter to immediately get on the phone with his father and get this stopped.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fine. Except that Joe Biden\u2019s trip to Ukraine was announced in mid-November. And except that, in mid-September, the American ambassador to Ukraine elevated concerns about Shokin\u2019s reliability in the fight against corruption \u2014 the reason Joe Biden offered for demanding that Shokin be fired.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cWe need some help,\u201d Jordan claims that Burisma executives said to Archer and Hunter Biden, referring both to Shokin and a British probe of the company. So \u201cthey make a phone call to D.C., Mr. Archer said. I don\u2019t know who they call, but they call D.C. And five days later, Dec. 9, 2015, Joe Biden is in Ukraine and he gives a speech starting the pressure on the prosecutor in Ukraine.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What\u2019s important here is that Jordan admits he doesn\u2019t know if this call in December 2015 was even placed to Joe Biden. We know that the trip wasn\u2019t a result of the call, given the November announcement. And we know that this was not the \u201cstart\u201d of the pressure on Shokin.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We also know that the reason Biden and the U.S. government (among other global leaders) wanted Shokin fired was that he wasn\u2019t addressing corruption. That British probe, for example, had reportedly sought information from Shokin about Burisma \u2026 but he stonewalled them.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In a tweet summarizing Archer\u2019s testimony, the Republican majority on the House Judiciary Committee claimed that Archer had testified that Burisma was spooked because Shokin was investigating them for corruption. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was present for the interview, offered a very different assessment when speaking to reporters shortly afterward.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cBurisma believed that they had the prosecutor general Shokin in their pocket, they had control over him,\u201d he said, \u201cand they were concerned that if he was removed from office, that that would be very bad for Burisma.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This comports with the general understanding of the situation. After all, this was all adjudicated repeatedly in 2019, as Joe Biden\u2019s push for Shokin to be fired was central to the first impeachment of Donald Trump. At the time, multiple sources indicated that there was no active investigation into Burisma in that time period. And if there\u2019s no pressure on Burisma from Shokin, there\u2019s no reason for Burisma to seek his ouster. If he\u2019s blocking such probes, there\u2019s pressure on them to retain Shokin \u2014 which would have been a more plausible reason for asking Hunter Biden to call his father before the vice president\u2019s trip.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>But a source familiar with Archer\u2019s testimony who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door, transcribed interview told The Washington Post that Archer offered a different explanation for the call.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He \u201ctestified there was a team of lobbyists and government affairs specialists Burisma hired that Archer referred to as the \u2018D.C. team\u2019 to deal, unsuccessfully, with issues including the fact Zlochevsky was denied a visa to the U.S. and Mexico,\u201d the source explained. Archer suggested that the call may have been to that team, not the vice president. The source also indicated that Archer \u201cmade clear he was not aware of Hunter Biden ever requesting that his father undertake any official action on behalf of Burisma and explained that he was not aware of any action of the U.S. government or any U.S. official was taken to benefit Burisma or Hunter Biden.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Goldman has called for the release of the transcript, which would help clarify this point.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What\u2019s understood from the Archer testimony is that Hunter Biden sought to use the \u201cbrand\u201d associated with his last name as leverage in business deals. That alone explains nearly everything at hand, including his calling his father out of the blue to prove to potential partners that he had the power to do so. That there\u2019s no evidence he ever tried to get Joe Biden to do anything reinforces Archer\u2019s other reported claim: that Hunter promoted the \u201cillusion\u201d of influence over Joe Biden, not actual influence.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Once again, though, a Republican \u201cbombshell\u201d that was promoted as possibly inflicting devastating damage on Biden seems to have instead fizzled.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Point: \u201cDespite Comer\u2019s claim, though, the allegation is not becoming more credible every day. In fact, it is no more credible now than it was in early May, when Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first introduced it.\u201d Washington Post: Another GOP \u2018bombshell\u2019 fails to detonate By Philip Bump<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":263,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1025029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ICYMI: Washington Post: Another GOP \u2018bombshell\u2019 fails to detonate - Democrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-washington-post-another-gop-bombshell-fails-to-detonate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Democrats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-08-01T19:39:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-05-15T18:58:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Old_War-Room-Master-File.png?w=1024\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Claire DePree\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Claire DePree\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-washington-post-another-gop-bombshell-fails-to-detonate\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/democrats.org\/news\/icymi-washington-post-another-gop-bombshell-fails-to-detonate\/\",\"name\":\"ICYMI: Washington Post: Another GOP \u2018bombshell\u2019 fails to detonate - 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