When they hear James Comer speak with his lilting south-central Kentucky accent and courteous style, it would be an easy mistake for Democrats and targets of his newly fanged House Oversight committee to underestimate the former Monroe County cattle farmer.
But Comer is a killer — and corruption is his prey.
Everything has changed in Washington since the Republicans won back the House, and Comer, as chairman of the Oversight Committee, is champing at the bit to hold the Biden administration accountable. That includes getting to the bottom of the Biden family corruption as revealed in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, and elsewhere, using the awesome power of Congress.
“This is not about Hunter Biden,” Comer said last week in a broad-ranging interview with The Post. “It’s about Joe Biden.” He aims to “prove Joe benefitted financially and prove he made decisions against the best interests of the United States.”
Biden probers get busy
Comer is increasingly confident of his case, as whistleblowers come forward to the committee’s investigators from all aspects of the Biden family enterprises, and financial institutions. He says his investigators are examining the hitherto unexplored activities of Joe Biden’s brothers, Jim and Frank — and have witnesses willing to talk.
His initial focus has been to follow the money trail to see how it connects to the Chinese Communist Party. For that purpose, the committee will subpoena 13 banks, the majority of which have been fully cooperative.
Hunter’s high-priced lawyers have been sending letters to the banks warning them not to hand over information to Congress, which Comer says is “bulls–t. They don’t set the rules, Congress sets the rules.”
Hunter’s lawyers also have sent warning letters to Hunter’s former business partners, which Comer describes as “intimidating witnesses.”
He also promises that, unlike previously when Republicans controlled the House, he will crack down savagely on anyone who lies to Congress.
This Wednesday, his committee will begin probing Twitter’s censorship of The Post’s original laptop stories in October 2020, which was part of an apparent coverup by the FBI and Big Tech to protect Joe Biden before the election.
Appearing under oath is James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy general counsel who played an instrumental role in censoring The Post’s account, and who previously was the top lawyer at the FBI, where he was a lead protagonist in the Russiagate plot against President Trump. Baker was parachuted into Twitter just five months before the 2020 election and his role appeared to be as gatekeeper to block information that might be detrimental to Biden.
Also appearing Wednesday is Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of “safety and integrity” a k a chief censor. Roth previously revealed in a sworn declaration that the FBI warned them before the 2020 election to expect a dump of “hacked” material by “state actors”, likely in October, relating to Hunter Biden. This pre-bunking of The Post’s scoop caused Twitter to censor the story.
The third witness to testify is Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, who played a key role in censoring The Post and was fired from her $17 million job shortly after Elon Musk took over last October.
Among the questions Republicans on the committee will want to ask is: Who orchestrated Baker’s hiring by Twitter? Did he communicate with anyone associated with the Biden campaign or at the FBI before the election?
Did he know about Hunter’s laptop before The Post’s story was published?
What was the message the FBI sent to Twitter via their Teleporter channel the night before The Post published?
Baker is a past master of deceit, so getting straight answers will be tricky given the format, but similar questions to Roth and Gadde should bear fruit for the systematic evidence bank Comer is building.
Huddle with Chief Twit
Comer met with Musk for more than an hour in Washington recently and was assured of his full support. The Democrats’ Jan. 6 committee has set precedents that Comer will follow. Filming depositions is a crucial part of the armory, something not done before the Jan. 6 investigation but which proved to be remarkably effective in setting the narrative for the public.
Instead of politicians jostling at hearings to make their mark in limited time with their own questions, seasoned interrogators conducting the depositions will draw out a fuller account from witnesses over several hours.
Comer may remind you a little of Columbo, the mild-mannered TV detective whose deceptive geniality lulled suspects into giving the game away.
He is not scruffy like Lieutenant Columbo, but he has the same ruthless focus, disguised by a rural Kentucky congeniality.
While the media tries to paint Comer and his fellow Republicans as clowns, the traps are set and the truth undoubtedly will follow.
The tell-all Pentagon wants shelved
Kash Patel has written a terrific book, “Government Gangsters,” giving an insider’s account of the deep state sabotage of Donald Trump’s presidency, from his vantage point as an adviser to the president and Russiagate investigator for the House Intelligence Committee.
But a book as incendiary as this is not going to have an easy time getting into the hands of the public. And so it is that Patel’s completed manuscript has been languishing at the Department of Defense for more than three months, ostensibly undergoing prepublication “review.”
Patel says his book does not contain classified information — but it sure does send a rocket up the Department of Defense.
He takes direct aim at what he calls the Defense Industrial Complex and the “incestuous relationship between senior military leadership within the DoD and the key officers in charge of multibillion-dollar procurement programs on the one hand and the behemoth defense contractors on the other . . .
“We pay billions for products we don’t need for wars we don’t need to be in. Then, when the generals and officers who pushed for and elongated those wars get out of the military, they are rewarded with a big fat paycheck by the very companies making all those high-priced goods for the DoD.”
Patel sees the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle as the inevitable result of a corrupt military leadership, and he blames Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the “unprecedented politicization of the military”.
Surely the DoD is not so frightened of a little robust criticism that they are burying Patel’s book.
Prince is just dirty Harry in sexposé
So much for the older woman who rode Prince Harry like a stallion while taking his virginity, as he recounted in lascivious detail in his book, “Spare.” Turns out she’s only two years older than Harry — and one year younger than his wife, Meghan Markle.
Sasha Walpole, now a 40-year-old mother of two who drives a digger for a living, has been outed as the mystery Brit the world’s press has been searching for since Harry blabbed about their teenage tryst.
She kept her mouth shut for 21 years when she could have made thousands of dollars selling her story to the media. In the end it was Harry who cashed in on her privacy, scoring a reported $20 million to spice up his crybaby memoir.
“I don’t understand why he went into such detail,” Walpole told a reporter who tracked her down last week. “He could have said he lost his virginity and left it at that . . . I would never have spoken out if Harry hadn’t. I’m not that sort of person . . . He has brought it to my door by writing about it.”
It’s Harry’s lowest act so far. No one should ever take him seriously when he whines about his own privacy.