That’s All They Have — Republicans Are Pushing Out Phony Scandals
We have seen a persistent pattern from the GOP and the right wing media since Bill Clinton began his run for president in 1992. The Republicans make up phony scandals about Democrats to distract voters from an improving economy and the Republicans’ extreme positions on the issues.
This all began with the Whitewater matter back in 1992. The Republicans subsequently piled on with a series of phony scandals involving the tragic suicide of Vince Foster, FBI files, the travel office firings, the Clinton Christmas card list and the Rose law firm billing records. Robert Fiske — the first GOP special prosecutor — investigated these allegations and was on the verge of closing down his investigation due to a lack of evidence to sustain any of these charges.
The Republicans responded by firing Fiske and replaced him with Kenneth Starr as the special prosecutor. Starr had no previous prosecutorial experience and was a partisan Republican. He re-opened Fiske’s investigation and found no evidence to prove any of the GOP allegations.
Starr kept his investigation open when he received evidence from Clinton’s enemies that Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. That’s all he and his staff ever found. After the failed impeachment of Clinton, Starr resigned and was replaced by yet another GOP special prosecutor. The end result was that three GOP special prosecutors investigated the Clintons for seven years and all they found was the Lewinsky affair. The Clintons were never charged with any crimes.
The Republicans reprised the Clinton era playbook during the Obama Administration. The Republicans confidently predicted that Obama and members of his administration were going to go to prison over the alleged IRS targeting of Republicans and the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi in 2012. Once again, the Republican allegations proved to be groundless.
The Senate Finance Committee investigated the GOP targeting allegations and issued a report in 2015. Senator Ron Wyden (R-OR) issued the following statement about their findings: “The results of this in-depth, bipartisan investigation showcase pure bureaucratic mismanagement without any evidence of political interference. Groups on both sides of the political spectrum were treated equally in their efforts to secure tax-exempt status.” The bureaucratic bungling stemmed from chronic GOP underfunding of the IRS. Nobody was charged with a crime.
The Republicans went overboard on their investigations of Benghazi. There were no fewer than seven (count them!) Republican Congressional investigations of Benghazi. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accurately summarized their findings: “There have been seven investigations led mostly by Republicans in the Congress,” Clinton said. “And they were nonpartisan, and they reached conclusions that, first of all, I and nobody did anything wrong, but there were changes we could make. This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan political issue out of the deaths of four Americans.”
When Hillary Clinton emerged as the Democratic front runner in 2015, the Republicans launched multiple investigations of the private email server she used as Secretary of State. Clinton was cleared two times by the FBI and James Comey, the Inspector General’s Office and the Trump State Department. Hillary Clinton is the most exonerated politician ever.
The Republicans carried out the same game plan during the Trump Administration by weaponizing the Department of Justice. After Trump falsely alleged that Obama and Biden had wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, Bill Barr appointed Charles Durham to investigate these reckless allegations.
The Durham investigation was a miserable failure. Durham lost two cases in which minor figures were charged with so-called process crimes. Durham obtained one guilty misdemeanor guilty plea from an individual who only got probation. The Durham investigation was a humiliating defeat for the GOP.
The Republicans are at it again during the Biden Administration in an attempt to distract from Trump’s multiple indictments and the improving economy. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has alleged that the FBI received a tip from a foreign national who falsely claimed he paid a $5 million bribe to Joe Biden. He is also claiming that there are recordings that substantiate these charges. However, these charges have already been debunked.
Despite the fact that the charges have been discredited, Grassley and the GOP are undeterred and forging ahead. “We are not interested in whether the allegations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not,” Grassley recently said on Fox News.
Even Steve Doocy of Fox News is skeptical. “You don’t actually have any facts to that point,” Doocy said to House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) “And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is — there’s no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally.”
The Republicans are now claiming that a FBI document proves their allegations. Apparently, the GOP is alleging that the FBI document contains some information about a recording that supposedly proves that Biden took a bribe. “About a dozen GOP members viewed the document in a classified setting at the Capitol. But a source familiar with the document tells Fox, quote, ‘The document does not say Joe Biden received any payments.”
James Comer and Charles Grassley have acknowledged that they don’t know if the Biden bribery allegation is true. And when he was asked during an interview about the recordings, Comer said, “We don’t know if they’re legit or not.”
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) threw even more cold water on the alleged recordings. He conceded that he doesn’t even believe that the tapes exist. Johnson stated that the alleged audio recordings need to be “taken with a grain of salt” and could be made up. “We don’t know really if the tapes exist, we just don’t know that,” Johnson, said. Even Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), said he wasn’t sure if the recordings even exist.
It gets even worse for the Republicans. Comer admitted that the Republicans lost track of a key witness in their investigation about the Biden family being involved in the phony scheme. “Unfortunately, nobody’s had any contact with him for the last three years,” Jordan said.
Disgraced former New York City Mayor and Trump attorney, Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax that the “witness” who supposedly had all the information regarding the non-existent bribe to Joe Biden and his family has died.
The Justice Department under then-Attorney General Bill Barr investigated these allegations back in 2020, found no evidence to back them up, and shut down the investigation.
“Republicans are once again reminding Americans they are doing Donald Trump’s political dirty work, and that tells you everything you need to know about the seriousness of these political stunts,” said Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee.
“Congressional Republicans are openly admitting they’re peddling debunked conspiracy theories in an embarrassing attempt to improve their political prospects heading into 2024,” the spokesperson said.
The GOP has pushed out phony scandals for votes and money for over thirty years. Republican voters should be more skeptical about people who have lied to them since 1992. The GOP has found nothing since Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky — which was the high water mark of GOP oversight.
The Republicans want to make stuff up because they don’t want the 2024 election to be decided on the issue of the economy. We are better off now than we were two and a half years ago. Prices rose 4 percent in comparison with last year, the smallest 12-month increase since March 2021. Unemployment rates in the US have been below 4% for 16 months in a row. This is the longest stretch of unemployment this low since the 1960s.
The GOP told us that it was “Morning in America” in 1984 when unemployment was 7.3% and inflation was 4%. It’s “Morning in America” in 2023. Unemployment is 3.7% and inflation is 4%. Enjoy the Biden boom!
Don’t take this progress for granted. In 2000 and 2016, some of us were complacent and stayed home or voted third party. The last two Republican presidents destroyed their predecessors’ progress and presided over deep recessions. We can’t let that happen again. The Republicans are dangerous when they are in power.
The choice in 2024 is America or the MAGA Republicans. Choose wisely. Now let’s get it done!