House GOP prepares to embarrass itself with more Biden impeachment nonsense

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House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan has grasped at every straw in his quest to avenge Donald Trump and impeach President Joe Biden, including the one straw held out to him by an alleged Russian mole. That having blown up embarrassingly in his face, Jordan appears to be leading his committee into another fiasco.

Jordan’s latest effort is his investigation into just how old Biden is, with a hearing Tuesday. His star witness is special counsel Robert Hur, the Department of Justice official who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents and found that no criminal charges were warranted. Hur did, however, throw in some gratuitous hits on Biden’s age in his report, which legal experts have called “a partisan hit job.”

Hur probably won’t deliver what Jordant wants, according to sources involved with preparing Hur’s testimony who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. Hur is “intent on turning down the political temperature surrounding his report,” the Journal reports, and to try to explain why he included the extraneous bits about Biden’s memory. Those details, Hur is expected to say, “were necessary to explain his team’s decision that charges weren’t justified.”

That’s problem No. 1 for Jordan. Problem No. 2 is that Biden himself blew the “Biden is too old” narrative clear out of the water with last week’s State of the Union address. Biden adeptly scrapped with Republican hecklers, forcefully laid out his agenda and earned news reports declaring him aggressive, energetic, fiery, feisty, and forceful. Biden’s speech didn’t just wow the pundits—it seems to have impressed voters. Public opinion soared in quick polls conducted after the speech.

That’s going to make arguing that this man is too doddery and feeble to be trusted with the nation’s security a little tough for Jordan and team. It also gives Democrats on the committee a chance to swing for the fences on Donald Trump’s fitness to lead, particularly his alleged classified documents crimes.

Because what Republicans tended to ignore in Hur’s report was the part where he compared Trump’s and Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur pointed out that “after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” and that Trump “not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

On the other hand, Hur wrote, “Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.” You can be sure that the Democrats on the committee are going to be teasing out every detail of that comparison, putting Hur on the record against Trump.

Thus Jordan’s star witness is shaping up to be a hostile one, the whole premise of the hearing has fallen apart, and he’s opening up the congressional record for more official testimony from a representative of the Department of Justice about Trump’s abuse of power. This might just be fun.