Last week, Senate Republicans voted down a Democratic attempt to hear from witnesses at President Donald Trump’s ongoing Senate impeachment trial. Now, this weekend, in complete and willful ignorance of the evidence against Trump, prominent Trump ally and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has issued grand pronouncements about plans to go after the Obama administration. Barack Obama, of course, left office years ago, but in the face of the long presentations of evidence implicating the current president in Ukraine-related corruption and the chance for relevant fact-finding via witness testimony, Graham evidently prefers to investigate Obama.
Discussing the baselessly supposed Biden family corruption in Ukraine, Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked Graham:
‘You’re not going to give him a pass — how are you going to get to the bottom of it? Should we expect your committee to call to testify Hunter Biden, the whistleblower, Adam Schiff, all those names you’ve been talking about — is this gonna happen this upcoming week, then?’
Graham indicated in response that essentially, yes — he is plotting an investigation of the Bidens, Obama, and more, which would essentially carry the torch of the failed plot that Trump led to bribe Ukraine into launching that same kind of investigation. He wants to pick up where that revealed plot left off.
He told Bartiromo:
‘It’s gonna happen in the coming weeks. Jim Risch is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — Jim, if you’re watching this show, and I hope you are, we need to call the chief of staff who was told about the conflict of interest with Hunter Biden being on Burisma’s board early on… Let’s call these people in. Eventually we’ll get to Hunter Biden, and I want to know why the Obama administration did nothing about this obvious conflict of interest. Joe Biden should have given up the Ukraine portfolio, or Hunter Biden should have been taken off the board, because they ruined America’s ability to effectively deal with corruption in the Ukraine… That’s just a fact.’
Watch:
Up is down — Lindsey Graham says he intends to compel former Obama administration officials and Hunter Biden to testify before the Senate as part of an investigation into purported Obama administration misconduct in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/x45QCNgm9e
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2020
It’s great to see that U.S. policy decisions are being ironed out through a Fox television screen! What could go wrong? Lots of things, obviously. It’s outrageous for Graham to call out to Risch like that.
Has Graham heard of the current president? Is he aware of a guy named Donald Trump? Did he listen to a single minute of the House’s days of presentations in which they explained how Trump tried to rope current Ukrainian leadership into an international bribery scheme targeting a rising candidate in U.S. politics? Graham seems so pompously concerned about supposed effects on the U.S. ability to deal with global corruption, but he is completely ignoring all of the demonstrable evidence against Donald Trump. He’s launched off into complete denial.
This year, he’s up for re-election, with a rising challenge from former Democratic Party official Jaime Harrison. A full half a dozen currently GOP-held seats are listed by the Cook Political Report as either toss-ups or only “leaning” Republican, which is the last stop before toss-up status. Democrats need to hold onto all of their own seats and nab four of those to become the chamber’s majority party.
