House Judiciary Committee ranking Republican member Jim Jordan of Ohio has announced the GOP will investigate Hunter Biden — and it's designed to gin up outrage on Fox News, according to a new Washington Post analysis.
Philip Bump wrote that Jordan's Friday press conference "did do what news conferences are designed to do: get media attention. Specifically, Jordan and Oversight ranking Republican member James Comer (Ky.) were invited onto Fox News’s prime-time programming to explain their arguments. Arguments, you will not be surprised to learn, that Hannity and other Fox News hosts have been making for months."
Jordan is widely expected to chair the House Judiciary Committee when Republicans take control of Congress in January.
"There’s a pattern to the investigatory process here. Back in 2013 and 2014, with Republicans in control of the House, there were a slew of investigations into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012," The Post wrote. "That story drew a lot of attention on Fox News itself; there was an often-explicit feedback loop between the network and the focus of the investigations."
Bump noted Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the current House GOP Leader, credited the Benghazi investigation with lowering Hillary Clinton's poll numbers ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
"The House Republican effort, though, can’t be separated from the eagerness with which members of the party’s caucus are explicitly appealing to the Fox News/right-wing-media echo chamber," Bump wrote. "After Thursday’s news conference, numerous observers scratched their heads about the timing: The party had just had that electoral underperformance thanks in part to a universe of rhetoric that mirrored what was being amplified at the news conference. In response, the party was pledging to use its power to double down on the claims from that universe? Yes. In part because it fits with the pre-2016 and pre-2020 pattern of targeting a presidential opponent. And in part because doing so guarantees that Republican officials will get retweets and Fox News hits and coverage on the network that keeps them at the center of attention."
