DEFLECTION CENTRAL: Republican House Oversight Committee chair can’t answer one simple question
CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper pushed back on new House Oversight Committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) over the disparity in the committee’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s possession of classified materials versus its treatment of former President Donald Trump’s uncooperative battle over the top secret documents that he purloined.
“You’re asking for the visitors’ logs at President Biden’s Greenville – outside Wilmington, Delaware – home. Are you also asking for the visitors’ logs at Mar-a-Lago?” Tapper asked.
Comer’s response was about what one would expect from a Republican – massive deflection.
“Well, we’re doing the Biden Family Influence Peddling investigation and I can tell you, what we’ve learned just in the last few days from Biden’s mishandling of classified documents is that the Biden Center was funded primarily from anonymous donations from China,” Rep. Comer replied. simply ignoring Tapper’s question.
What Congressman Comer tried to peddle is simply not true.
Watch the video below.
“Was it the Biden Center or University of Pennsylvania?” Tapper pushed.
“There’s a pattern here,” Comer claimed.
The University of Pennsylvania has a total endowment of roughly $20.7 billion – $54.6 million of it was received from Chinese donors. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn was just one of several U.S. Ivy League institutions to receive nearly $1 billion in donations from China since 2013.
Harvard University is the largest benefactor with $93.7 million, Bloomberg reported. That’s nearly double that of U. Penn.
Comer stuck to his narrative, accusing the Biden Center of being funded by anonymous Chinese donors. It was just another unsubstantiated gaslighting attempt by the GOP to link the president to Chinese interests.
“I can tell you what we’ve learned just in the last few days from Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, is that the Biden Center was funded primarily from anonymous donations from China.”
Also, not true.
A spokesman for the University of Pennsylvania, Stephen MacCarthy, contradicted claims that the Biden Center received funding from nefarious sources.
“One hundred percent of the budget for the Penn Biden Center comes from university funds,” MacCarthy told the Free Beaconlast week.
The Penn Biden Center “has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity. In fact, the University has never solicited any gifts for the Center.” MacCarthy said the think tank has only unsolicited earmarked gifts from two donors, “which combined total $1,100.”
But why let facts get in the way of a good GOP talking point?
The issue at hand is the hypocrisy among Republican politicians between Trump’s known handling of classified and top-secret documents vs. President Biden’s awareness – or lack thereof – of whether sensitive government information was taken from the White House when he was Vice President.
“The issue of whether, or not, sources and methods are compromised,” Tapper pressed. “Whether or not any of these documents got into the wrong hands. Whether or not Biden, or Trump, allowed documents to be kept in a haphazard way. That exists period.”
Oversight Committee Chair Comer tap-danced around answering Tapper’s questions about investigating the Trump family and administration congruent with its probe into the current President.
Justifying the newly named Oversight and Accountability Committee’s commitment to giving both instances a fair and balanced look, Comer told the CNN host:
“There have been so many investigations into President Trump, I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years.”
“No one has been investigated more than Donald Trump. Who hasn’t been investigated is Joe Biden,” the GOP congressman added.
Well, maybe because President Biden didn’t incite an attack on the Capitol, weaponize federal agencies for spite and revenge, and use the U.S. Treasury as his own personal piggy bank.
Watch the video here.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
