For SC Congressman Russell Fry, the truth about Biden doesn’t matter | Opinion

Got a text this week, from Russell Fry. He’s the Republican representative for the Seventh Congressional District of South Carolina, where I’ve lived since graduating college in the mid-‘90s. In a few short sentences, it illustrated what’s wrong with the political era in which we are living.

The text wasn’t personal. It was a mass text to his constituents. I haven’t spoken face-to-face with Fry for a few years since he, I and my kids worked together on a charity project at St. James High School in the aftermath of a natural disaster that included widespread flooding. I knew his mother before I met him, a woman whom I’ve long respected and was the initial reason I even voted for Fry when he first ran for the S.C. House in Columbia after another Republican resigned while being investigated for sexual harassment allegations. I’ve long regretted that vote. The text confirmed why.

“This is Congressman Russell Fry,” it began. “I serve on the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee, where we have been investigating Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in his family’s business.”

Here’s the kicker: “Do you think there is enough evidence for the House of Representatives to open a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and continue our investigation into the President? We need to hear from you. Click here to take our…survey.”

House Republicans have been “investigating” Biden since he became president. That’s why I know Fry didn’t have to ask us if there was enough evidence, because he knows there isn’t. Every time they claimed to have a bombshell, the allegation was quickly proven false, often laughably so, despite what Fox News hosts are still leading their viewers to believe.

The investigation hinges on a contradiction. Biden supposedly helped get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son Hunter Biden, who worked for a Ukrainian company, from potential criminal charges. Joe Biden was only carrying out his duties as vice president. The Obama administration wanted that prosecutor fired because he was not investigating corruption. Most of our allies wanted it, too.

In other words, Joe Biden’s push to help oust the prosecutor increased the chances his troubled son would face charges — the opposite of what the bizarre conspiracy theory posits.

But after spending all these months finding no wrongdoing by Joe Biden, House Republicans moved forward with a formal impeachment inquiry anyway. Texts such as the one Fry sent out likely went out to millions of Americans in red districts throughout the country. It’s highly improbable that those texts mentioned any of the facts I just did.

It’s not a witch hunt, but a clown show of the highest order. Men like Fry are all too happy to play along to gin up a few extra votes, no matter the damage to this democracy, no matter how slimy.

Fry is only in office because his predecessor, Tom Rice, dared to do one politically courageous thing, and that was to vote to impeach Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection attempt in our Capitol. Republicans in my home district didn’t like that Rice, who had been a reliable member of the extreme right-wing of the GOP before that vote, expressed more fealty to the democracy than Trump. They punished Rice for that sin, which Fry capitalized on.

He’s still capitalizing on it. He’s no leader. He’s a follower of some of the worst actors in D.C. Maybe it’s because he’s power hungry. Maybe it’s because he’s incapable of standing for something good. Or maybe it’s because he was never an ethical man, not even when I foolishly voted for him all those years ago.

He’s the one thing we can’t afford at a time like this, and the one thing we have in abundance right now: unethical men who care only about themselves and their political futures.

Issac Bailey is a McClatchy Opinion writer in North and South Carolina.