As James Comer was about to unfurl two Oversight Committee hearings on Capitol Hill this week, the White House issued a complaint.
“Why does the media cover Rep. James Comer’s claims so uncritically?,” asked Ian Sams, the former Kamala Harris presidential campaign staffer who is now tasked with defending President Biden against a throng of GOP investigations.
It was in response to previews handed out to media outlets of Comer’s opening remarks ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, in which the Kentucky Republican blistered the Biden administration for creating “the worst border crisis in American history.”
Comer has, in fact, received an onslaught of largely favorable media coverage in the weeks leading up to his new role as chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Accountability Committee. He’s been exceedingly accessible to reporters, is just as likely to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as he is on Fox’s Sean Hannity and has indicated he believes media coverage will play a major role in his oversight efforts.
The White House noticed and is beginning to combat the charm offensive with its own aggressive strategy, attempting to bend the narrative after two weeks of hearings on the southern border, Twitter’s censorship policies and the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, in which Comer led questioning on whether Twitter executives colluded with American intelligence officials to suppress an unflattering story about Hunter Biden, most media outlets focused on the fiery exchanges – not a revelatory smoking gun.
After Bloomberg dubbed it a “thud,” Sams took to social media to spike the ball, summarizing their story as “brutal.”
Instead of showing any direct evidence that Biden or government officials pressured Twitter to suppress a story on the president’s son, one former employee testified that the Trump White House asked the social media company to take down a critical tweet by celebrity Chrissy Teigen.
When Comer was asked by CNN later if he found that revelation problematic, he said he did not.
“I don’t know what the Trump administration did or did not do. I would not be surprised at all if the Trump administration called and complained,” he replied.
To which Sams seized upon: “Maybe James Comer should make T-shirts. We held a hearing to uncover the feds asking Twitter to censor a Biden story, but all I got was this lousy testimony.”
Now that Comer’s slate of hearings are actually underway and being blared on television and through clipped snippets online, the veracity of his claims are being scrutinized and countered much more closely, allowing Democrats to piece together their own storyline.
Allies of the president believe that they’re already seeing signs of Comer’s overreach – an inherent risk of any Oversight chairman.
“Comer read the same reviews we did this morning, and he knows how badly his smut smear inquisition backfired,” said Eddie Vale of Facts First USA, one of the outside Democratic groups set up to defend Biden. “Since yesterday’s hearing yet again showed that it was actually Trump engaging in the behavior Republicans were falsely accusing Biden of … maybe any real oversight of foreign conflicts should include the Trump family.”
Regardless of what he thinks of the criticism, Comer is moving full speed ahead with his media blitz. Under questioning from Hannity Wednesday night, he asserted it was possible that the FBI intentionally dismissed the story about Hunter Biden as Russian disinformation to help Biden defeat Trump in 2020.
“They need to be held accountable. This is the first hearing. We got a lot of valuable information out,” Comer said.
On Thursday, Comer called on Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s brother, to provide documents and communications, framing it as a widening of his investigation into the family’s business deals.
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