House GOP 'eroded their credibility' by lobbing easily debunked Biden claims: analysis

Republicans have spent the past year throwing multiple accusations at President Joe Biden and his family -- but still haven't come up with any proof of wrongdoing that could justify impeaching him.

Washington Post columnist Philip Bump penned a piece explaining that House Oversight Committee chair, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) came into Congress a year ago promising that he would use his power to uncover if Biden was being bribed by China, Russia and Ukraine. He pledged to find "a legislative fix" to address influence-peddling in Congress.

With the assistance of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in the Judiciary Committee, the Republicans have gone month by month over-promising only to under-deliver, argued Bump, who then walked through each month for the last year to outline just how little Republicans have to show in their efforts to find "dirt" on Biden.

In March, for instance, Bump noted that the House Republicans released some information about the monetary interactions between Hunter and James Biden and their business partners.

However, they also released bank memos showing President Joe Biden never got any cash out of their business dealings, and many fact-checkers declared the GOP's claims of impropriety as overstated or outright false.

Comer called a press conference in May where he announced evidence Hunter and James Biden sold consulting and legal services to people including some outside of the United States. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) claimed that it was proof of an "alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions."

Grassley later acknowledged, however, that claims of the scheme may have been false.

Shortly after this, the Republicans boasted that they had an "informant" who claimed Joe and Hunter Biden were paid off $5 million, although Comer raised some eyebrows shortly afterward when he told Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo that the informant had gone missing.

Later, Comer's staff told Fox News that the missing informant was a whistleblower named Gal Luft, who would soon be indicted for trafficking weapons and cash to both Iran and the Chinese government.

"In July," writes Bump, "the Justice Department unsealed an indictment targeting Luft, the director of a D.C.-area think tank. Given that Luft had offered to provide information about his interactions with Biden, the indictment was cited by House Republicans, including Oversight’s Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) as evidence of an attempt by the government to silence a potential anti-Biden witness."

While he continues on for the rest of the more recent months of 2023, Bump notes that over and over, Republicans sound the alarm about some piece of starling evidence that will end Biden's presidency, only for it to turn out to be nothing. At the close of the year, Comer desperately tried to claim that because Hunter Biden was working with foreign entities for money and he paid his father back for a small loan for his truck, it meant Biden was getting money from China or Ukraine or other foreign countries.

Throughout the ordeal, Bump explains that Comer appeared on Fox News hundreds of times and used his appearances as fundraising pleas to score campaign cash from conservative viewers.

Read his full timeline in the Washington Post.