The White House has called on media organizations to target House Republicans with more scrutiny over their impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.
The White House has asked media outlets to subject House Republicans to greater scrutiny after they launched an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, focusing on allegations of corruption.
In a memo to media outlets obtained by The Epoch Times, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said that “it’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.”
Mr. Sams said in the memo that Congressional Republicans have for years tried to “muddy the waters” by making supposedly spurious allegations against President Biden and attracting media coverage that only serves to “generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth.”
He complained that media coverage has failed to “unpack the illegitimacy of the claims” on which House Republicans have based their impeachment inquiry, with Mr. Sams providing a 14-page appendix (pdf) that he says comprehensively addresses “the [seven] key lies House Republicans are suggesting they are basing an impeachment on.”
These supposed lies include the claim that President Biden “engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national,” that he is “compromised by deals with foreign adversaries,” and that he got the Ukrainian prosecutor general fired to help energy company Burisma, which employed his son Hunter Biden on its board and paid him around a million dollars a year.
The alleged “lies” have a factual basis, however.
For instance, FBI Director Christopher Wray has confirmed the existence of a document alleging that President Biden engaged in a criminal bribery scheme with a foreign national. And it has been well documented that, in 2015, then-Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine and threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid unless Ukrainian officials agreed to fire then-prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was accused of corruption.
Mr. Shokin later told a European court in a sworn affidavit that he was forced out because he was leading a corruption probe into Burisma, the company that gave Hunter Biden a job while his father was responsible for U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine.
Mr. Sams’ memo feeds into a broader narrative that accuses Republicans of having no evidence for the impeachment inquiry.
By Tom Ozimek
