December 14, 2023

Hey, Look Who Was On Colbert Last Night!!

Take a look:


Yep. That's western Pennsylvania's very own Guy Reschenthaler.

The Washington Post has the story:

The House Rules Committee was considering whether to advance a vote on a formal impeachment inquiry to the House floor, which it did along party lines. In the course of the debate, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) had a pretty basic question for his Republican colleagues.

“What is the specific constitutional crime that you’re investigating?” Neguse asked Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.).

“Well, we’re having an inquiry so we can do an investigation to compel the production of witnesses and documents,” Reschenthaler said.

Neguse, who served as a House prosecutor during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, pressed again: “And what is the crime you’re investigating?”

Reschenthaler responded merely, “High crimes, misdemeanors and bribery.” It was a reference to the constitutional threshold for impeachment, not a specific offense.

“What high crime and misdemeanor are you investigating?” Neguse asked.

“Look,” Reschenthaler said, “once I get time, I will explain what we’re looking at.”

Basically, they're saying that while they have the evidence of impeachable offenses, they have to impeach in order to have the inquiry to find the evidence of impeachable offenses.

Whah?

The Post has some more:

Yet even when Reschenthaler did get time to expound shortly after the exchange, it still wasn’t so clear what the inquiry was about: Was there any reason to believe anything implicated Biden?

Reschenthaler began by pointing to Biden’s effort to get Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, fired.

“We have him on tape, dead to rights, bragging about shutting off aid to Ukraine in order to get a prosecutor — who’s actually probably the one guy in that government that wasn’t corrupt — that guy going after [Ukrainian energy firm] Burisma, which his son sat on the board of Burisma,” Reschenthaler said. “Quite amazing.”

Huh? 

How long has this been debunked?

At least this long. This was published October 3, 2019:

whistleblower complaint centering on President Donald Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president has spurred a number of allegations and counterallegations as Republicans and Democrats jockey for position amid an impeachment inquiry.

At the heart of Congress' probe into the president's actions is his claim that former Vice President and 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in order to thwart an investigation into a company tied to his son, Hunter Biden. 

But sources ranging from former Obama administration officials to an anti-corruption advocate in Ukraine say the official, Viktor Shokin, was ousted for the opposite reason Trump and his allies claim.

It wasn't because Shokin was investigating a natural gas company tied to Biden's son; it was because Shokin wasn't pursuing corruption among the country's politicians, according to a Ukrainian official and four former American officials who specialized in Ukraine and Europe.

And so on. 

And yet there was our Guy in DC, spreading the misinformation all over again.