Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was very specific in leveling allegations at President Joe Biden as he announced greenlighting the House impeachment inquiry. McCarthy shared the James Comer-led House Oversight Committee’s assertion that “Joe Biden is ‘The Brand’ that Hunter Biden and the Biden Family sold around the world to enrich themselves.”
The rest of the post reads: “As millions of dollars were pouring in, Joe Biden dined and spoke with his son’s business associates to send signals of access, influence, and power. This is abuse of public office.”
Joe Biden is “The Brand” that Hunter Biden and the Biden Family sold around the world to enrich themselves.
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) September 15, 2023
As millions of dollars were pouring in, Joe Biden dined and spoke with his son’s business associates to send signals of access, influence, and power.
This is abuse of…
There are numerous reasons that McCarthy needed to be strong-armed into acquiescing to the inquiry. He’d long resisted it despite taunts from rabble-rousing GOP Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and even after very direct orders from former President Donald Trump who posted on Truth Social:
“These lowlifes Impeached me TWICE (I WON!), and Indicted me FOUR TIMES – For NOTHING! Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!”
One of the more obvious reasons McCarthy seemed reluctant was risk aversion: after nine months of investigation into Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and what Comer repeatedly called the “Biden crime family,” no evidence had been turned up linking the President to any wrongdoing.
But another reason may be that McCarthy knows that business and politics are always closely related, and that there is a difference between being connected to someone and being available to them — as Joe Biden admits he was with his son — and being involved with that person in criminal activity.
McCarthy knows this firsthand, as is shown in a 2018 Los Angeles Times investigative report revealing that a company owned by the Congressman’s brother-in-law, William Wages (McCarthy’s wife’s brother), had received $7.6 million in federal government contracts to do work, mostly in McCarthy’s Bakersfield district.
The LA Times story from 2018 begins: “A company owned by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s in-laws won more than $7 million in no-bid and other federal contracts at U.S. military installations and other government properties in California based on a dubious claim of Native American identity by McCarthy’s brother-in-law.”
Reporters Paul Pringle and Adam Elmahrek reveal that McCarthy’s brother-in-law’s company, Vortex Construction, “was awarded more than $4 million in minority set-aside contracts for projects at China Lake.”
They further reveal that “McCarthy has been a staunch advocate in Congress for funding and staffing for China Lake, the Navy’s largest property at more than 1.1 million acres, and spearheaded successful efforts to expand its borders.”
Though “ethics watchdogs questioned whether the blossoming of the in-laws’ business in McCarthy’s political backyard was a coincidence,” the article states that “both Wages and McCarthy said they have never discussed Vortex’s work with each other.”
So the Bidens’ claim — which McCarthy cast aspersions on — that two close relatives never discussed the business one was conducting, even when that business could be aided by political power held by the other, must sound familiar to McCarthy. It’s the same claim he has made himself.
