RUTHFULLY YOURS

Since the prospect was first raised, I have been of the view that the Republican Party would be better off moving too slowly than too fast in its inquiry into the Biden family’s peculiar business dealings. James Comer and Chuck Grassley have done sober and sedulous work over the past couple of years, and I have worried that, if they were to run out over their skis, they would fatally undermine their own efforts. As National Review’s editors correctly observed this week, impeachment is ultimately a political question, not a legal question, and it is thus subject to the slings and arrows of demagoguery and the vicissitudes of public opinion. Hitherto, my advice to the GOP has been to keep up the good work and wait for the right moment. An inquiry was already ongoing. What need could there be to formalize it?

I have changed my mind. Naturally, I still consider it imperative for the Republicans to remain diligent and shrewd and for all involved to stick assiduously to the facts. But, having watched the brazen manner in which both the White House and the press have continued to stonewall, I have come to the conclusion that a more ceremonial investigation is, in fact, necessary. In theory, the media ought to be keenly interested in informing the country of where things stand. In practice, its leading lights have effectively been working for the president. If the GOP is to have any chance of conveying what it has found thus far — and, despite the foot-stamping and gaslighting, what it has found thus far is extremely interesting — it will be obliged to do so under its own steam. We are a long, long way away from Woodward and Bernstein. To break through, the Republicans will need to stage their own show.

Thus far, the White House’s response has been to deny everything in the hope that the questions will go away. And, thus far, that has worked. Why? Certainly, it is not because President Biden’s denials have been proven reliable. Far from it! Asked recently whether he had done anything wrong, Biden was categorical: “I did not,” he replied. “It’s just a bunch of lies.” Perhaps so. But one cannot help but notice that this is exactly how President Biden has spoken about all of the other allegations, too. “I have never talked with my son or my brother, or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period,” Biden said in 2019. Actually, he had. “My son has not made money, in terms of thing about, what are you talking about — China,” Biden insisted in 2020. The records show that his son’s firm made $11 million there. “That’s not true,” Biden said this year, when asked whether “Hunter Biden’s business associates sent over $1 million to three of your family members.” As it happened, it was. Now, President Biden is claiming that he was not financially involved with his son’s business — or, as CNN is putting it, that that he was not “improperly” involved with his son’s business. This may turn out to be true — we’ll see. Given how the rest of his denials have panned out, however, it ought at least to be treated with skepticism.

President Biden is fond of indignation. Having been asked in May whether the investigation into his son, Hunter, was warranted, Biden was emphatic: “First of all,” he told Stephanie Ruhle, “my son has done nothing wrong.” Which is an extremely peculiar way of describing the willful failure to pay more than $1 million in taxes, an attempt to classify exotic dancers as a business expense, and the prioritization of “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature” over complying with federal law. As one might expect, Hunter has followed his father’s lead. The charges against him, he said yesterday, represent a thinly veiled attempt “to dehumanize me, all to embarrass my father.” Come now.

When defending the Bidens, the press has been keen to highlight the remarkable scope of what it typically refers to as “a father’s love.” There is nothing wrong with this observation. Fathers do, indeed, love their sons, and sometimes they love their sons in ways that blind them to the truth. But one cannot have it both ways. If Joe Biden’s obvious love for Hunter is worth commenting on, then so is the deranging effect that love is likely to have. Were anyone else in Hunter Biden’s position, Joe Biden would be calling him a “tax cheat.”

And if anyone else were in Joe Biden’s position? Suffice it to say that the press would not be pumping out narratives as transparently protective as this one, from yesterday’s New York Times: “The Republican-led House is on track to approve a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden on Wednesday, pushing forward an investigation that has failed to produce evidence of anything approaching high crimes or misdemeanors.” That is not an outlier. Almost every piece that is written about the allegations against the Bidens reads like that. Were an alien to come down from space, he would be forgiven for concluding that it was against the law for the media to report on this investigation without assuring its readers that there is nothing to it. From the moment the first wisp of smoke went up, the media has treated the story in precisely the opposite way as it treated the absurdity that was Russiagate. Back then, the media wanted to talk about nothing else, and, when it was forced to, it habitually treated the near-total lack of evidence as confirmation of the conspiracy. Now, the media is as taciturn as it can get away with being, and, when it does cover the news, it casts even the most dramatic shifts in documentation as peculiar irrelevancies. The Republicans ought to make it clear that they have noticed — and circumvent the blockade.