In 2015, Kevin McCarthy, then the House Majority Leader, got stunningly candid about the reason Republicans wouldn’t let Benghazi go. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he told Sean Hannity. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.” The remarks seemed like an admission that GOP lawmakers were exploiting the 2012 tragedy to damage Clinton’s presidential ambitions. That, combined with James Comey’s last-minute announcement that the FBI was reopening its probe into her use of a private email server, likely contributed to her upset loss to Donald Trump in 2016.
Now, the president’s allies appear to be using the same playbook against Joe Biden. In William Barr’s Department of Justice and on Capitol Hill, Trump allies are gearing up probes into the origins of the Russia investigation as a vehicle to damage Trump’s Democratic challenger. Senator Ron Johnson, who is leading one of the inquiries, has been explicit about his intentions. “I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection,” he said in a radio interview this week, “and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden.”
“It should completely disqualify Biden from president,” Johnson said in a separate interview of the “outrageous” evidence he claims to have uncovered.
Barr has not been quite so frank about the politics behind his probe, but nevertheless seems to be looking to perform a hatchet job on Biden. Speaking to Hannity Thursday, the attorney general teased a forthcoming “development” in the probe he commissioned into Trump’s empty conspiracy theory that he was the victim of a deep state hoax from the Obama administration. He vowed not to do “anything inappropriate before the election,” but also said the John Durham-led investigation would not be “dictated to by this schedule,” leaving open the possibility that he’s gearing up for his own October surprise.
GOP lawmakers and the DOJ using investigations to legitimize Trump’s conspiracy theories about the “Russia hoax” and Biden’s dealings with Ukraine underscore the underhanded tricks Democrats are facing this fall. Trump, trailing Biden and Kamala Harris by double-digits in recent polls, has mounted a robust attack on the legitimacy of the upcoming election and is attempting to undermine the postal service on which it will depend. Meanwhile, Barr, Johnson, and Lindsey Graham are overseeing probes into the origins of what would become the Mueller investigation and discredited theories about Hunter Biden’s relationship to Ukraine, with Johnson seemingly admitting they are meant to give Trump a boost in November. “This damning acknowledgment totally exposes that Ron Johnson’s disgraceful conduct is the definition of malfeasance,” a Biden spokesman told Politico. “It is beyond time for him to end this embarrassing and deeply unethical charade once and for all.”
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