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Eight years ago, Rep. Kevin McCarthy drew widespread condemnation from his fellow Republicans for a move that could have cost him his bid to succeed John A. Boehner as Speaker of the House. McCarthy drew a line between the Benghazi investigation and Hillary Clinton’s declining poll numbers. Among those who criticize him: the president who leads the investigation.
On Monday, the Republican congressman who led an investigation into the Biden family’s finances made somewhat similar comments, connecting his investigation to President Biden’s poll numbers.
Appearing on Fox News Monday morning, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) suggested the mainstream media could not ignore the investigation because of its impact on Biden’s position in 2024.
“So you think because of your research, that’s what’s moved this needle with the media?” the host asked Comer.
“Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it,” Comer said. “You look at the polls, and right now Donald Trump is seven points ahead of Joe Biden and trending up; Joe Biden is trending down. And I think the media is looking around, scratching their heads and realizing that the American people are following our investigation.”
(Comer refers to Trump’s recent best poll of 2024; most polls show the race remains competitive.)
The comments go back to what McCarthy said in 2015 while introducing himself as speaker.
In an appearance that was also on Fox News, McCarthy credited his creation of a Benghazi select committee with tarnishing Clinton’s brand.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy said. “But we created a special committee on Benghazi, a select committee. What are their numbers today? Their numbers are going down. Why? Because it’s not reliable.”
Republicans quickly they distanced themselves from the comment. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who was then the chairman of the Oversight Committee, called on McCarthy to apologize for his “absolutely inappropriate statement.” Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy (RS.C.) later reflected to The Washington Post that McCarthy had apologized profusely to him early the next morning. “Kevin is a friend, which makes the disappointment, frankly, even more bitter,” Gowdy said.
McCarthy dropped out of the speaker’s race a little over a week later.
There are some differences between McCarthy’s and Comer’s comments.
One is that Republicans eight years ago weren’t just concerned with making the work of the Benghazi committee look political; they had also argued that the investigation was not necessarily about Clinton’s actions specifically, but about getting to the bottom of the deaths of four Americans in Libya. (“This investigation has never been about former Secretary of State Clinton and never will be,” Boehner said then.) The Biden probe, by contrast and by definition, is clearly about Biden.
But the bigger fear was that this would undermine the committee’s work by making it look like a political effort. As Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.), former chairman of the Oversight Committee, said at the time: “Any ancillary political activity that comes out of it is, in fact, not the purpose of the committee nor what the committee is trying to do do it.”
In other words, they feared that talking about the poll numbers would look like they were giving the game away.
Comer’s new comments could be understood only as an analysis of the circumstances in which the investigation has received more attention. McCarthy spoke a bit more directly about the creation of the committee and the political impact it had, even apparently taking credit for using an investigative tool for political gain. But Comer also clearly alluded to the political benefit of his research, connecting him with people who keep up with the research and that is reflected in the polls.
This also isn’t the first time Comer or another House Republican speaker has talked about these probes in the context of the 2024 race.
Comer has repeatedly connected his investigations to Biden’s deliberations about running for president, suggesting it could affect Biden’s calculus. He also acknowledged in a New York Times article about him that it would be more politically difficult to investigate Trump’s son-in-lawJared Kushner, on his foreign dealings.
And last summer at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, current House Judiciary Committee and “armaments” subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said the investigations would help to set the stakes in 2024.
“All of these things are going to be investigated so you get the truth,” Jordan said, “and it’s going to help frame the 2024 race, when I expect and I think President Trump is going to run again, and we have to make sure that he wins”.
