Romney gives Republicans tie-breaking vote in subpoena of Hunter Biden’s records at Burisma
The liberal media and many prominent commentators endlessly fawned over Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) when he cast the sole Republican vote during the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump, praising him for risking Trump’s displeasure with a performative and ultimately meaningless show of defiance.
But on Thursday, Romney quietly reminded us all that at his heart, he is still a Republican and therefore will use his power in the Senate to support the Republican Party, its agenda, and its efforts to re-elect Donald Trump.
CNN’s Manu Raju reports that Senator Romney will support Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) efforts to seek subpoenas in the recently announced probe of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where former Vice-President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden held a $50,000 a month board position despite having no experience in energy.
If he had not, the Senate Homeland Security Committee would have been deadlocked at 7-7 votes and the subpoena measure would have failed.
Thanks to Romney, Johnson now has the votes to get records related to Hunter Biden’s work at Burisma and begin the process of turning Burisma into Benghazi 2.0: a never-ending scandal designed to smear a Democratic presidential candidate and weaken him for the general election.
“He will therefore vote to let the Chairman proceed to obtain the documents that have been offered,” Romney spox adds. The decision is key bc now Johnson likely has the votes to approve subpoena for a public affairs consultant to Burisma
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 6, 2020
Earlier this week, Johnson had all-but-confirmed that this probe was in response to Joe Biden’s strong Super Tuesday showing. “If I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote,” said Johnson on Tuesday, announcing that he would have a “final report” in one to two months.
The duplicity of Mitt Romney was put on full display after he spent the past few days tut-tutting about the impropriety of the investigation, even openly complaining yesterday that it was obviously a partisan hit job: “There’s no question but the appearance of looking at Burisma appears political. And I think people are tired of these, these kind of political investigations…and I would hope that there’s something of significance that needs to be evaluated that would be done perhaps the FBI or some other agency … We also have a lot of work to do on matters that are not related to Burisma. We probably ought to focus on those things.”
But at the end of the day, Romney must have changed his mind and decided that bringing down Joe Biden was more important than keeping the Senate’s investigative powers from being abused in pursuit of yet another GOP witch hunt designed to produce content for Sean Hannity and then immediately forgotten as soon as the election is over.
His betrayal is yet another sharp reminder that Republicans are not your friends and should not your heroes; they do not deserve to be lauded for doing the bare minimum of their civic duty and should not be trusted to do so again.
Original reporting by Andrew Desiderio at POLITICO.
