Technically Correct:
Technically Correct:
The Fact Check Industry’s Favorite Kind of Correct
About a week ago, FactCheck.org - https://www.factcheck.org/ - turned its myopic attention to the recent announcement by House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that he was authorizing a number of committees to conduct an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The inquiry revolves around money – lots of it: Hunter, Joe’s lies about being even aware of how his crackhead son was paying for his crack even though they seemed to have had joint (at east linked) bank accounts, and how all this played into complicated ties with various not-so-nice nations and shell companies and his time as vice-president.
This particular fact check revolved around the idea that McCarthy had promised to hold a vote of the entire House before going forward with an impeachment inquiry, something he did not in fact do.
That much is correct.
For this about face, McCarthy has been accused of the dreaded “flip-flop” by wokerati chatterers. Of course, what some define as a cowardly flip-flop may be in fact a careful consideration of new information leading to a change in opinion, which is considered noble. In this case, it seems pretty clear that while there was a bit or two of new-ish stuff about the Biden family business, McCarthy almost certainly factored in political calculations to his change of heart – in other words, it was a flip but maybe not quite an entire flop, too.
When asked about the shift, McCarthy said former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had changed the rules during one of her 3,648 attempts (well, only two but it seemed like more) to impeach then-President Donald Trump.
Pelosi shot back that she had held a full House “can we go forward?” vote until she was reminded that, no, she didn’t actually do that.
The funny thing is that it really doesn’t matter – there is no rule or regulation or precedent saying a pre-vote has to be held.
So that part of the fact check is correct in a technical though “why is this a big deal?” kind of way.
But then FactCheck.org wades into why the inquiries are being and were held and goes completely off the truth rails.
This is how the article describes the basis for the Biden probe:
“So far, Republicans on the oversight committee leading that investigation have not produced evidence that shows Joe Biden participated in his family’s business deals, that he benefited from the deals or that he ever used his position as then-vice president to facilitate any of the deals.”
And here’s how the article describes the basis for the Trump probe:
“Democratic-led House committees had been investigating Trump administration activities for months. But Pelosi said she was compelled to start the impeachment inquiry after an intelligence community whistleblower alleged in an August 2019 complaint that Trump, ahead of the 2020 presidential election, had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a July 2019 phone call, to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” according to the complaint.
Trump’s actions had revealed his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said while making her announcement (at the time.)”
Just in case you were not sure that the Biden probe is bad and the Trump probe was good, the fact check even added a quote from Pelosi regarding the Biden impeachment:
“They’ve had what, nine months of collecting information?” Pelosi said about the House Republicans now investigating Biden. “They have nothing.”
To paraphrase, the Trump probe was conducted to save the nation and the Biden probe is a democracy-threatening Republican hack-job launched by a sneaky, snivelly untrustworthy politician.
Got it?
The funny thing is that this fact check would have been accurate – if actually meaningless in the grand scheme of things – if it had just known when to stop.
Therefore, this fact check gets a “Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses” for shoehorning political slant into a discussion where it was not necessary.
PS - So you don’t have to Google the Latin like I did, here the English translation:
"If you'd kept your mouth shut we might have thought you were clever.”
And here is the fact check in question: https://www.factcheck.org/2023/09/launching-impeachment-inquiries-reviewing-what-happened-in-2019-and-2023/