Serious Allegations?

Truth suffers when “serious allegations” with no evidence are a basis for inquiry.

Earlier this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, citing serious allegations requiring investigation. McCarthy, who previously insisted that acting unilaterally to launch such an inquiry would have no legitimacy, caved in to the most vocal of the extreme right of the GOP and announced the start of the investigation without a House vote. It is unclear if he would even have sufficient support from his slim Republican majority.

The general wisdom is that the effort will harm the GOP more than it will Biden or the Democrats. At this point, there is no credible evidence linking the president to the potentially criminal dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

While the idea of the whole impeachment process is ridiculous, I was immediately reminded that it was in the summer of 2020 that then-President Trump began sowing seeds of his stolen election theory. He began saying in campaign events that he could only lose if there was a concerted effort by Democrats to steal or alter votes in some manner. When the election couldn’t be called by the middle of the night following the closing of the polls, he began claiming that the steal was in progress. He declared that all votes counted after some random cut-off had to be illegitimate and the result of some clandestine effort by the Democrats to manufacture enough votes to win.

But the arguments were based on false claims of malfeasance. No evidence was ever produced to demonstrate that more than insignificant voter fraud of any kind had occurred, and even then mostly proportionate to the Republican/Democrat divide of the area.

So now, a man who has continued to have substance abuse problems and money problems comes up with a way to get paid for the possibility of obtaining access to his father, the president of the United States, is deemed to have colluded with that father simply because . . . well, simply because. And his father is presumed to have benefitted monetarily from the schemes. No evidence for either.

But there it is. An allegation. And even a few allegations. The allegations go all the way back to 2020 and the arguments about Hunter Biden’s laptop, along with the non-official investigations of his attempts to create a business enterprise in conjunction with some Chinese official designed to at least attempt to gain favor with the then-former Vice President, Joe Biden.

I guffawed at a post by a Facebook friend about some of those allegations back in 2020. He chastised me for almost certainly not listening to the 40+ minute audio discussion by one of these non-official investigators. So I listened to it. And I found two places where there was any mention of Joe Biden. It was not about being a participant in any of his son’s schemes. The first was simply a request to an advisor in one of Hunter’s deals to take care of him. Something that, in the context of the interchange is most rationally a request to watch out for him and keep him out of trouble. The second was merely a reference by Hunter to his father’s blessing (or something like that) without actually saying that it was the case.

The point is not to claim clear exoneration for Joe, but to demonstrate the number of implausibilities that must be searched beyond to arrive at even a legitimate charge.

Just like the never-substantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen simply because Trump could not have lost.

This is the legacy of electronic systems that allow everyone to be writer, editor, and publisher of anything they want to say. And we call it freedom of speech. (Never mind that simply saying anything you want was not made a right by the US Constitution.) And so anyone who wants to pontificate on it — or more correctly state their opinion as fact — can make any kind of claim that they want. And once they make it, it is out there. And if it is an allegation of wrongdoing by a political party, or a President, it is accepted as something that needs investigation.

And the truth is what suffers. Truth becomes what I say it is. Those trying to dictate how everyone will live and think complain about authoritarianism. Everything that I don’t agree with is seen as assaulting me if it doesn’t simply disappear at my declaration of “the truth.”

And so a claim by someone with no actual knowledge of supporting evidence becomes the basis for the government to spend time and money investigating the claim. “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by . . . .” Familiar words to almost every American. Consider that system. There is a crime. The police are called to investigate. If they find sufficient evidence for charges, they bring them to the district attorney who is charged with 1) determining if the evidence is sufficient to support an indictment, and 2) if it is sufficient, prosecuting the case. In the US federal impeachment system, the US House of Representatives are collectively the prosecutors. Before they act, there must be evidence presented to them that at least supports additional investigation. It is not necessary that a fully developed case be presented to them. But there should at least be some evidence. 

Not just mere allegations.

I recognize that at some level this post is little more than what I am complaining about — with one exception. I am not saying that we should start an impeachment, voter fraud inquiry, etc., on whimsical facts. I am instead suggesting that we should refrain from making such inquiries until there is some actual evidence beyond innuendo, claims, and allegations. If there are any witch hunts going on in the US at present, they are mostly being undertaken by the people crying about witch hunts.

As with most of what I write, this is clearly my opinion on the subject. I do believe that what I think I am seeing is based on sufficient facts to say what I do, but understand that I could be wrong. It does happen.