GOP Rep Gets Snippy as Reporter Presses Him on Biden Evidence

The Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee got testy with a NBC reporter during a Wednesday press conference after the journalist challenged him on the timeline of supposed evidence of President Joe Biden’s misconduct.

The journalist pointed out that a WhatsApp message that Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) had presented as potential evidence of Biden’s use of his political influence to help Hunter Biden was dated to June 6, 2017—before Biden was a presidential candidate, let alone president.

“I’m not an expert on the timeline,” Smith replied. “I would love to have President Biden or his family tell us all about the timeline.”

When the reporter pressed him, Smith asked what outlet he worked for. Hearing the answer, the congressman snapped, “So apparently, you’ll never believe us.”

Smith then spluttered that he was “definitely not going to pinpoint one item” of evidence when the journalist again asked him how the message demonstrated misuse of political influence. Shortly after, without having provided an answer, Smith demanded the next question.

The exchange was just the latest example of Republican politicians and right-wing media figures asserting a less-than-stellar knowledge of the Biden-related misconduct allegations they want to indict him on.

Just this week, Fox News buried an interview with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that largely demolished a longtime conspiracy theory asserting that a Ukrainian prosecutor was fired at the behest of then-Vice President Joe Biden to protect his son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm at the time.

Poroshenko instead dismissed the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, as a “completely crazy person” who didn’t utter a “single word of truth” about the Bidens and “played [a] very dirty game.”

According to Media Matters for America, the interview hasn’t been mentioned a single time on Fox ever since.

Even Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner Devon Archer was forced to clear up Republican-spread rumors in July that an administrative request from the Department of Justice in a separate case was an attempt to intimidate him out of testifying in front of a Republican-led congressional committee.

Once there, he was unable to provide evidence that the president was involved in his son’s business dealings—saying he discussed “nothing of material” with Joe Biden—though that didn’t stop House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer from going on a victory lap.

In actuality, as The Daily Beast first reported, Comer hadn’t even bothered to show up to the hearing he’d spent weeks touting.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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