James Comer Pushes Absurd New Argument on Hunter Biden Truck Repayment

Representative James Comer is doubling down on his claim that Hunter Biden repaying his father for a loan is proof that the president is corrupt.

Comer, who has spearheaded the investigation into the Biden family, released more of Hunter’s bank records on Monday, claiming they showed illicit payments to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the documents likely showed repayments for a truck.

But Comer remained adamant that Hunter paying his father back in any form meant Biden had benefited from his son’s overseas business.

“You can loan people money. If they pay you back, then you benefited directly from the influence-peddling!” Comer insisted on Newsmax Monday night.

The Kentucky Republican also claimed no one in his family repays him after he loans money. “When my son needs help, or my daughter, who’s in college, needs it, I just give her money. Nobody ever pays me back!” Comer said.

Comer made no mention of his own business deals with his brother, which reportedly include Comer loaning his brother Chad $200,000 in 2019. His brother repaid him through land swaps.

The bank record released Monday shows Hunter transferred $1,380 to his father in September 2018, when Joe Biden was not in office. Comer’s accompanying press release does not mention that Hunter made only two additional payments to his father in the same amount, on October 15, 2018, and November 15, 2018—a total of less than $4,500.

Comer also does not mention the previously reported emails from Hunter’s laptop that indicate those transfers were paying his father back for a pickup truck. Instead, he makes it seem that Hunter has been making shady monthly payments to his father for years.

Republicans have claimed for months that Biden has benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but they have yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Ranking Oversight Committee Member Jamie Raskin slammed Comer for pushing the loan repayment as proof.

“Chair Comer is digging up old public reporting, distorting the facts, and presenting it as ‘breaking news,’” Raskin said on X (formerly Twitter).

“If Chairman Comer had any actual evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, he would not repeatedly resort to distorting the facts and recycling Trump-Giuliani conspiracy theories.”

A new House resolution condemning antisemitism isn’t quite what it seems.

House Resolution 894 doesn’t simply call for the public denouncement of antisemitic behavior. It also equates any and all anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The four-page resolution “clearly and firmly” cements the false conflation that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” That would plaster any Jewish anti-Zionist as an antisemite, and would likely warrant character attacks on any lawmaker who objects to the current iteration of the bill.

The resolution, which could be voted on as soon as this week, condemns not just the October 7 assault that claimed 1,200 Israeli lives but also popular chants utilized by peaceful protesters that are plainly protected by the First Amendment, including “From the River to the Sea,” “Palestine Will Be Free,” and “Gaza Will Win.”

The resolution blatantly vilifies pro-Palestinian sentiment, including calls for the end of Israel’s 56-year occupation in the Middle Eastern country. As one example, it mischaracterizes a protest and candlelight vigil at the Democratic National Committee headquarters last month as “endangering” people’s lives.

As of Monday, more than 15,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed in the conflict since the initial attack by Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Fighting resumed on Friday after a weeklong truce to exchange hostages. Since then, an additional 800 Palestinians have been killed in a weekend ground offensive headed by Israeli troops in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, Americans overwhelmingly support a cease-fire in the war-torn region. Last month, an Economist/YouGov poll indicated that 65 percent of surveyed Americans wanted a cease-fire, while only 16 percent said they didn’t.

Money poses another issue. While Congress battles to pass a foreign aid package to Israel, just 32 percent of Americans felt that the current level of aid to the right-wing government should continue, while 23 percent said they wanted less.

Newly ousted Representative George Santos already has a new job: making videos on Cameo. And at least there’s proof of this latest addition to his résumé.

Cameo is a website where people can pay for a personalized video from their favorite celebrities. Santos, who has dubbed himself a “former congressional ‘icon,’” is charging $200 for a video or just $10 for a personalized message.

In one of his first videos on Cameo, Santos says, “They can boot me out of Congress, but they can’t take away my good humor or my larger than life personality, nor my good faith and the absolute pride I have for everything I’ve done.”

Santos does not specify what he means by “everything I’ve done,” but if he’s referring to his work in Congress, then perhaps he should have less pride in it. During his 11 months on Capitol Hill, Santos introduced 40 bills or resolutions. All of them died in committee without a vote.

Santos also co-sponsored 152 bills. The only one that became law was an act creating a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

Santos did, however, lie about his professional, academic, and athletic background. He has falsely claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, and four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. He also lied about founding an animal rescue charity and producing the disastrous Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

He was federally charged with 23 counts of various types of financial fraud. Santos pleaded not guilty to the initial 13 in May, and he has denied the additional 10 that were filed in October in a superseding indictment. Earlier this year, he agreed to a deal with Brazilian authorities investigating him for financial fraud so he could avoid prosecution.

Santos did become the sixth member of Congress ever expelled, when his colleagues finally gave him the boot on Friday. A House Ethics Report revealed Santos repeatedly used his campaign to solicit donations, only to use that money for personal expenses, including buying designer goods and makeup, getting cosmetic procedures, and “smaller purchases at OnlyFans.”

Santos told reporters last week that he plans to write a book and wouldn’t rule out a turn on the reality competition show Dancing With the Stars. But for now, he’s just on Cameo.

If you buy a Cameo video for him, though, maybe try to avoid giving him your credit card information directly. You could end up like Representative Max Miller.

House Republicans released more of Hunter Biden’s bank records on Monday, claiming they showed illicit payments to his father, Joe Biden. In reality, the documents likely showed repayments for a truck.

Republicans have claimed for months that Biden has benefited from his son’s foreign business dealings, but they have yet to produce any actual evidence of wrongdoing by the president. Monday’s revelation appeared to be yet another major miss.

“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” Representative James Comer, who chairs the committee and has spearheaded the investigation into the Bidens, said in a video.

“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world.”

The payments did come from an account linked to Owasco, a company Hunter Biden set up to handle income from foreign business deals. The Oversight Committee released one bank statement showing Owasco transferred $1,380 to Joe Biden on September 17, 2018—when Biden was not in office.

What Comer does not say is that Hunter made only two additional payments to his father in the same amount, on October 15, 2018, and November 15, 2018, a committee aide told the Washington Examiner, speaking anonymously. (That’s a total of less than $4,500.)

Comer also does not mention the previously reported emails from Hunter’s laptop that indicate those transfers were paying his father back for a pickup truck. Instead, he makes it seem as though Hunter has been making shady monthly payments to his father for years.

In 2019, Hunter’s then personal assistant, Katie Dodge, sent multiple messages regarding his bills. In one, sent on January 17, she said that Biden would pay his son’s bills “in the short-term as Hunter transitions in his career.”

That email included a PDF of the payments Hunter needed to make. The document showed Hunter owed $1,380 to his father for a 2018 Ford Raptor truck. Dodge had reminded Hunter about the $1,380 truck repayment he owed his father in an email she had sent three days earlier.

“The truth is Hunter’s father helped him when he was struggling financially due to his addiction and could not secure credit to finance a truck,” Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Monday. “When Hunter was able to, he paid his father back and took over the payments himself.”

Republicans repeatedly cite Hunter when arguing that the president is guilty of corruption. House GOP leaders could move this week toward a vote on formally opening an impeachment probe into Biden. But Republicans consistently fail to show that Biden is guilty of anything.

The National Republican Congressional Committee released a wildly xenophobic ad on Monday, depicting several national parks overrun with immigrants.

The ad used artificial intelligence to create images of different national parks in the style of vintage travel posters. The parks, which include the Grand Canyon and the National Mall, are filled with tents that supposedly belong to undocumented immigrants.

“More crime. Less tourism. No beauty,” the ad says. “Democrats’ National Parks.”

The ad is an attempted jab at Democrats who voted last week to block a bill that would prohibit using public lands for temporary housing for migrants applying for asylum. The bill passed in the House on Thursday by a vote of 224–203. Six Democrats joined Republicans to support the measure, which is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Many Democrats have warned that the bill is a Republican messaging tactic ahead of 2024, when GOP candidates are expected to make draconian immigration policies a major part of their platforms.

Those critics were proven right Monday with the RNCC ad. The ad combines two popular Republican talking points: opposing immigration and accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. But not only is the ad deeply xenophobic, it’s also false. A study released in July by a team of economists from Stanford University found that immigration has not caused crime rates to increase in 140 years.