Republicans in Congress have been searching for an off-ramp to end their impeachment inquiry into President Biden after the whole case blew up in their faces, and they may have found one. The general thinking at this point is that Republicans are going to issue “criminal referrals” against President Biden and his son to the Justice Department, which effectively allows them to keep their hands clean. And when the DOJ refuses to prosecute these made-up crimes, Republicans will allege corruption at the DOJ and sell that bogus talking point to voters. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains the plan.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have spent the last, what would that be, 14 months now, investigating President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. They’ve promised us time after time again we’ve got the smoking gun witness. We’ve got the star witness. We’ve got the key witness, and every time it falls flat. And that’s nothing new, of course, we’ve talked about that every step of the way of it happening. But what is interesting now is that Republicans who launched this impeachment inquiry into Biden, uh, they’re looking for an offramp. Multiple reports have come out in the past week saying that these Republicans finally understand we got nothing, but we can’t just end it because obviously our voters are gonna be because they want him impeached. And we certainly can’t go to them and be like, hey, we know you want this, but this guy’s unfortunately squeaky clean on these issues, so there’s nothing we can do. The voters are gonna be about that. But more importantly, the moderates, the independents, they’re gonna revolt against the Republicans for wasting everybody’s time for over a year.
But Republicans, according to James Comer himself, may have found that offramp. And he admitted to it recently when he said, quote, at the end of the day, what does accountability look like? It looks like criminal referrals. It looks like referring people to the Department of Justice. And I have to tell you this, as far as Republicans are concerned, is not a stupid idea because Republicans, through the process of criminal referrals, which they’re now suggesting they’re probably going to do, it’s not confirmed. It’s just their idea. It’s the smartest thing politically for them. And I don’t wanna give Republicans any ideas. I’m not trying to tell them how to do this, but think of it this way, they’re gonna submit criminal referrals, most likely for President Biden to the Department of Justice. These criminal referrals are not actually going to show any real criminal wrongdoing. They’re gonna be total bull crap. But they’re gonna submit the bull crap to the DOJ and then before the DOJ can do anything about it, they’re gonna run to their voters and say, hey, we found some stuff. We sent it to the DOJ so they can prosecute the bastard. And then the DOJ’s gonna say, um, we’re not gonna prosecute him.
And then Republicans run back to their voters. And what do they tell ’em? Aha. Look at this corruption. Look at this coverup. We had him on all of these crimes. And the DOJ won’t even prosecute him because they’re protecting him. The whole system is corrupt, they will tell us. Politically speaking, that’s a smart strategy. I mean, Democrats, obviously, we don’t buy it. Some independents aren’t gonna buy it. Some independents are. Every Republican will 100% buy it. And there is nothing that the DOJ could really do to convince the public that, hey, no, they just kind of scribbled crayon on a piece of paper and said, indict Biden. Like, that’s not a criminal referral. Republicans would be like, nope, that’s not what happened. And then we’re in this like endless loop of, wait, they’re lying. No, they’re lying. Even though one side, the Republicans are clearly lying, the DOJ is kind of between a rock and a hard place because you can’t prove a negative. And that’s exactly what Republicans are setting them up for.
