Republicans and other supporters of former President Donald Trump insisted that the investigation into his and his campaign's ties to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election was "a hoax", a "witch hunt". They derided it as "Russia, Russia, Russia". They claimed that the investigation by Robert Mueller exonerated Trump - no collusion! They claimed that the obviously partisan Durham report, which among other things stated that the FBI should have opened a "preliminary investigation" instead of a "full investigation" when presented with suggestions that the Trump campaign was conspiring with agents of the Russian government, also not only exonerated Trump, but "proved" that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, President Biden, and possibly even James Madison were corrupt. But the truth was that a Trump campaign staffer bragged to a foreign diplomat that they were communicating with Russia to dig up dirt on Clinton; Trump Junior and other campaign staffers did meet, at Trump tower, with Russians claiming to have dirt on Clinton; former General Michael Flynn did resign after lying, not only to the FBI, but to Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russians, and let's not forget Trump bragging to Russian diplomats and revealing classified information to them in the Oval Office as well as his obsequious relationship to Russian President Putin. There was plenty there to justify an investigation. If it was a witch hunt, they sure found a lot of witches.
Despite the glaring evidence that there was something there worth investigating, Republicans vowed that they would exact retribution upon the Democrats for their supposed persecution of Trump. It didn't really matter whether or not there was something there, they were going to find something. Their majority (albeit small) in the House of Representatives gave them a platform to conduct their own investigations, if you can call the clown car of committee hearings that they are conducting an investigation.
Republicans' idea of "evidence" is to dream up a scenario that they think sounds plausible, that, if a hundred details coincidently go a certain way might be true, and then maintain that this thin veneer of plausibility is "proof". We saw this in their claims that the 2020 election "landslide" was stolen by the Democrats, and are still hearing about it from failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. They have applied this illogic to their allegations about President Biden. They think that it's plausible, or even likely, that the only reason that Hunter Biden was on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma was to provide a conduit to bribe then Vice President Biden into dropping an investigation into their business dealings. As if Hunter was the first relative of a president or senator or governor to be hired to get some kind of access to power, as if political donations were for merely charitable purposes. Despite their suppositions, there's no evidence, there never was any evidence, and I doubt there ever will be any evidence. The latest ephemeral "evidence" is a FBI memo from an informant who says that he heard from a Ukrainian source that a Ukrainian employee of Burisma told him that he bribed Joe Biden $5 million and that he has 17 tapes to prove it. Except no one at the FBI has heard the tapes or talked to the Burisma employee or the other Ukrainian source or has even been provided with names or contact information by the informant. It's a rumor about an allegation about hearsay. And it's suspiciously similar to allegations that Rudy Giuliani made a few months ago. And despite it's thinness, the Republicans are claiming that the existence of this unconfirmed, unconfirmable allegation, somehow confirms the allegation - proves it. And this is somehow the basis for impeaching Biden. Circular reasoning at its finest.
Governing by Appalachian hill country blood feud.
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