Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY) clashed over a Republican failure to investigate fraud in the Trump administration.
During a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Lee argued that "nobody here believes that rooting out fraud and waste and abuse is not a top priority of this committee."
"But I think like so many things with the modern Republican Party, it's like you're skulking right around the edge of things, but too often, your bigotry, the Republican Party's own bigotry is imprisoning them and keeping them from ever actually doing something that helps," the Democrat said of Comer's investigation of alleged Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota. "When it's a person of color, if it's two or three, it's a pattern, and the entire community must be indicted, but if it's a hundred Republicans, it's just not bad."
"But the tone of this hearing seems to be a hypocritical witch hunt is hard to take it as anything but that, rather than an actual oversight effort," she continued. "Again and again, Trump has attacked the oversight mechanisms within the federal government. He illegally fired 17 inspectors general and other key personnel. He goes after whistleblowers, and he tries to roll back their protections."
"Republicans have turned a blind eye to all of this. They have held no hearings on these actions."
As Lee yielded her time, Comer objected.
"Ms. Lee, the IGs are hired to identify fraud," he snapped. "They haven't identified fraud. The IGs have failed."
"You all have failed!" Lee exclaimed. "You all continue to fail! We've done nothing. You have a gavel, Mr. Comer! We barely do hearings on anything that actually affects change."
"You have failed!" Comer shouted back.
"You want to have power here, and yet you don't do anything!" Lee yelled. "Yes, he actually initiated this."
"You have failed," Comer grumbled.
