During lengthy Congressional proceedings on Wednesday focused on the GOP ambition of going after the president’s son Hunter Biden for ostensibly falling short of subpoena compliance amid an investigation into his business dealings, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) accused Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and investigation leaders of fostering threats to witnesses’ lives.
Balint’s comments were reported earlier by The Hill. Jordan is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in this Congress. “Not only are the chairman’s investigations a cynical waste of time, but they have put the lives of regular people in danger,” Balint said. “Witnesses that have appeared before this committee have testified that House Republicans have spread dangerous conspiracy theories about them. And it has led to threats against their families and against them.”
She named people affected thusly including individuals in law enforcement and a woman who at the time was at an advanced stage of pregnancy.
Wednesday wasn’t the first time that deceptive rhetoric from the Right has been connected to real-world possibilities of violence. Defamation proceedings against Trump ally Rudy Giuliani recently concluded with a massive financial penalty for the former mayor reaching $148 million over lies that he told and helped spread about two former election workers in Georgia, a mother and daughter named Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. And the two sued Giuliani again, though in the follow-up case without seeking additional financial penalties, after Giuliani just kept pushing the consistently debunked conspiracy theory that the two were involved in imaginary election fraud in 2020.
Outspoken House Democrat Eric Swalwell (Calif.) is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, and he confronted Jordan during Wednesday’s proceedings for pursuing Hunter (who’s been open, by the way, to public testimony) despite his own flouting of subpoena demands from the House committee that investigated January 6 and circumstances leading up to that day’s violence.
