Comer Gives Away the Game When Asked Why He Won’t Just Subpoena Hunter Biden

Republicans could have avoided opening an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden simply by subpoenaing his son. But they have no good answer for why they didn’t take that option instead.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden on Tuesday, after months of the GOP insisting that the president and his son Hunter Biden are guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas. Republicans have yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims.

And throughout all of the hearings and interviews, Republicans have not once subpoenaed Hunter Biden for testimony. When asked Wednesday why that was the case, House Oversight Chair James Comer, who has led the charge against the Bidens, couldn’t answer.

During an interview with Newsmax, Comer said that Hunter Biden is “more than welcome” to testify on Capitol Hill. “He’s invited today. We will drop everything,” the Kentucky Republican said.

When host Rob Finnerty pointed out that Hunter Biden was unlikely to voluntarily appear before Congress, Comer haltingly replied, “Well, he can fight the subpoena in court. It’s very difficult … if it were easy to get a president or their son in front of a House committee, then the January 6 committee probably would have done that with Donald Trump.”

Comer’s right that the House investigative committee on January 6 struggled to get Trump to appear. But that may be due to the fact that Trump swore in 2019 that he would fight “all the subpoenas” for investigations into his actions. His administration refused to provide information for more than 100 congressional investigations, and Trump even sued his own accounting firm to try to block it from giving his tax records to Congress.

In comparison, nearly 70 Biden administration officials have provided testimony, either in hearings or transcribed interviews. Oversight Committee members have been briefed by high-level FBI and Secret Service officials, and they have received thousands of documents from the Treasury and the FBI.

But rather than subpoena Hunter Biden, Republicans moved right to an impeachment inquiry. Despite Comer’s hedging, the GOP has already admitted why. Republicans know they don’t have enough evidence to actually impeach and convict Biden. They just want to make him look bad enough that he loses the 2024 election.

Representative Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a theater in Denver on Sunday for “causing a disturbance” during the performance—and now we have the video footage.

Employees at the Buell Theatre asked two patrons to leave the evening performance of Beetlejuice after their behavior sparked three complaints from other attendees. An incident report says the pair were vaping, singing along, recording the show, and generally disrupting the performance, The Denver Post reported Tuesday.

While the venue’s report did not name Boebert or identify the person she was with, her campaign office confirmed she was escorted from the show. Security footage from inside the Buell shows venue security officials asking Boebert and a man to leave the show and then escorting them out of the theater.

It is not clear who the man with Boebert is. She filed for divorce from her husband earlier this year.

In the video, Boebert is seen initially refusing to leave her seat. One of the ushers had to threaten to call city police before the pair agreed to leave, according to the venue’s incident report.

Police were called and stayed in the theater lobby until Boebert and her companion had left. While they were being escorted out, the pair told employees “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board’ [and] ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” the report said. The video also shows Boebert giving the finger to security as she is being escorted out.

Boebert’s campaign manager confirmed that the representative had been asked to leave the show, but he denied that she had been vaping. He also confirmed that Boebert had used her phone to take a photo of the performance but said she didn’t know that wasn’t allowed. Typically, theaters announce before shows begin that photos and video of any kind are prohibited.

Elon Musk had wanted to recruit Rudy Giuliani in the early 2000s to help turn PayPal into a bank, but the outgoing New York mayor was too skeezy even for Musk, according to a new biography of the Tesla founder.

Musk co-founded PayPal in 2000. He originally wanted to name the company X and dreamed it would disrupt the finance sector (sound familiar?). Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, which was released Tuesday, reports that Musk and investor Michael Moritz flew to New York soon after to see if they could recruit Giuliani to act as their political fixer and banking policy adviser.

When Musk and Moritz met with Giuliani, “it was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in Isaacson’s biography. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”

“They asked for 10% of the company, and that was the end of the meeting. ‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

Giuliani went on to become known as “America’s mayor” after shepherding New York City through the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He then unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and eventually became Donald Trump’s personal attorney. While he initially amassed millions as a lawyer, consultant, and public speaker, his finances have been struggling of late.

Trump has refused to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, forcing Giuliani to fly to Mar-a-Lago and beg for Trump to pay up. Giuliani is also struggling to pay his own legal bills as he battles an indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

BP CEO Bernard Looney has resigned. On Tuesday afternoon, the Financial Times reported that his departure was the result of his failure to disclose the “extent” of his “past personal relationships with colleagues,” per BP. “He did not provide details of all relationships and accepts he was obligated to make more complete disclosure,” the company said, noting that that it was conducting an ongoing investigation into his conduct following multiple “allegations.” Looney, 53, who has worked at BP since 1991, was brought on as CEO in 2020 as a fresh face to pivot the company formerly known as British Petroleum toward the future. He made $12 million last year, which is more than double what he took home in 2021.

Details about Looney’s departure are still scant. But in a less than auspicious coincidence, the news came on the same day that International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol announced that, for the first time ever, the agency projects peak demand for coal, oil, and gas to arrive before the end of this decade. He called it the “beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” In 2018, two years before Looney took office, fossil fuel pollution was found to be responsible for one in five deaths worldwide.

Under Looney’s watch—during which time there has been a drumbeat of catastrophic, climate change–fueled storms, floods, and heat waves—BP first made and then broke its much-hyped plans to scale back oil and gas production and double down on lower-carbon ventures like electric vehicle transport, wind, and solar. Like its competitors, the company saw record profits from oil and gas extraction in 2022. That made it less attractive to spend big on less profitable low-carbon businesses.

Earlier this year, BP, which has been linked to the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, announced that it would look to cut fossil fuel production by 25 percent against 2019 levels by 2030—not by 40 percent as it had pledged earlier. BP’s spending on low-carbon ventures, it should be said, has always been small. The U.K.-based think tank Common Wealth found that, in 2022, BP spent 14 times as much on shareholder payouts (including both dividends and share buybacks) as it did on “low carbon” ventures.

BP is not Beyond Petroleum, as it once tried to brand itself. It is decidedly, though, Beyond Looney.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden on Tuesday, and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is calling it out for the deeply unserious move that it is. 

When asked for a response to the news, Fetterman feigned shock and distress.

 “Oh my God, really?” he asked, his voice squeaking upward in pitch as he grabbed his head in his hands.

“Oh my gosh, you know, oh—it’s devastating!” Fetterman went on, before breaking into laughter.

“OooOooo don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!” he moaned, clutching at his heart as his aide pulled him away. “Oh no, oh no!”

Fetterman’s response says all we need to know about how the Democrats feel about this impeachment inquiry: It’s one big joke.

The House speaker has launched this inquiry, despite having no evidence of wrongdoing by the president and despite criticism from members of his own party. On Sunday, Republican Representative Ken Buck slammed the entire impeachment inquiry. 

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence—linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Buck said. “That doesn’t exist right now.” 

The impeachment inquiry could also spell trouble for the 18 Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020.

When Fetterman was asked about McCarthy’s plans for the impeachment inquiry last week, he responded: “Go ahead. Do it, I dare you.”

“It would just be a big circle jerk on the fringe right,” Fetterman added.