After the first day of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, which resulted in a revealing moment in which one of the GOP’s star witnesses admitted he sees no evidence to warrant impeachment, an anchor at the right-wing cable channel Newsmax complained about the “impossibly high bar” of “direct firsthand evidence.”
In his opening monologue Thursday night, Rob Schmitt insisted that the impeachment inquiry was actually “wildly credible,” and Democrats were acting out of “desperation” based on their comments during the House Oversight Committee hearing.
Schmitt then prefaced a clip of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) questioning each of the GOP’s three witnesses.
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“Watch AOC setting an impossibly high bar to protect our corrupt president, asking each guest whether they have direct, firsthand evidence of Biden corruption,” Schmitt said.
All three individuals—conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley, former Justice Department tax attorney Eileen O’Connor, and forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky—responded no to Ocasio-Cortez’s question.
“So that is now the bar for an investigation—for an inquiry,” Schmitt groused.
“You need to have enough evidence for a solid, unanimous conviction before you can even begin an investigation. That’s the bar, I guess for Democrat politicians,” he continued. “Imagine if we ran our justice system this way? You wouldn’t be able to investigate a murder suspect unless a cop watched him kill the guy. Only then would you be allowed to investigate. This is what a political party looks like when absolutely gutted by an inescapable scandal.”
While Schmitt argued that Republicans have unearthed an “endless supply of evidence of corruption by our president and First Family,” Fox News viewers earlier in the day heard one anchor’s skeptical reaction.
After Chairman James Comer (R-KY) ended Thursday’s session, Neil Cavuto commented, “I don't know what was achieved over these last six-plus hours.” The longtime Fox anchor added, “Where there was smoke, today we just got a lot more smoke.”
Republicans’ movement towards a potential impeachment of Biden was thoroughly lambasted by House Democrats during the hearing, with several of them accusing members of the opposite party of kowtowing to former President Donald Trump’s demands.
“We see the long arm—but little hands—of Mr. Donald Trump, whose fingerprints are all over this hearing and this sham impeachment,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) said, similar to the comments of her colleague, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
