Facts First USA, an organization involved in activism against Republican lies, has written to U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, who serves in Washington, D.C., to seek a criminal investigation potentially implicating Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is currently the leader of the House Oversight Committee, in crimes under federal law.
In short, the organization is fed up with the meandering statements made by Comer amid a sprawling investigation into supposed financial corruption involving the Biden family. During a recent interview on Fox, he claimed at least one individual who had proven to be a source for information relevant to the nonsensical Biden probe had gone missing, and in a later interview, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is a member of Comer’s committee, confirmed what sounded like the whereabouts of several figures who had information were unknown. Did these people exist? Did the whistleblower relaying information from this supposed informant (who went AWOL) make them up? Did Comer make something up?
Lying in what Facts First described as the context of a Congressional investigation is prohibited under federal law, which is obviously a recognized standard in law that also applies in probes conducted elsewhere in the federal government. Contextually, it appears the informant — as they’ve been known in shorthand, since the Republicans haven’t identified them by name or position — helped provide information for a complaint alleging misconduct involving Biden that was made in 2020. The allegation involved an exchange of financial support for a policy move, although a publicly available Republican letter did not provide any more details on the substance of the claim beyond that level of information, letting them get away with spreading it without necessarily having the facts.
“Thus, if there is a whistleblower who concocted a story about an informant, doing so violated Section 1001,” the letter from Facts First to prosecutors said. “Alternatively, it is Representative Comer who violated the law by lying to the American people about the existence of an informant. To be clear, if it is Representative Comer who has manufactured this false information, the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause provides him no shelter because Representative Comer has repeated his lies across the rightwing media.” Read more at this link.
