WASHINGTON — By many accounts, Thursday's impeachment inquiry hearing was one that backfired on the House GOP when none of the three people they called as witnesses testified that they witnessed any crimes committed, or that they felt the committee had sufficient evidence to impeach President Joe Biden.
Even pundits on right-wing media outlets declared that the hearing fell short of delivering any proof of impeachable offenses. Fox News host Neil Cavuto said on air that he couldn't understand what the six hours of hearings accomplished.
In an appearance on right-wing media network Real America's Voice, former Trump administration official Kash Patel also said the House GOP failed to make their case.
Establishing that the committee and witnesses offered no new evidence that Biden had committed any impeachable crimes, House Democrats used their time to roast Republicans for their impeachment efforts.
They accused the GOP of hypocrisy, drawing parallels between the accusations aimed at President Biden and his son, Hunter, and the actions of former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
They called the credibility of the witnesses into question and shamed the committee for devoting time and resources into the hearing instead of passing the necessary spending bills to avoid a government shutdown. And they dismissed the hearing as a blatant attempt to appease the former president, using Trump's own social media posts calling for a government shutdown as a means of halting the prosecutions against him.
Florida lawmakers weigh in
Multiple Congressmen from Florida played roles in the hearing which generated a lot of attention on TV and social media.
Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds introduced into evidence an image of a 2018 text message exchange between Hunter Biden and Jim Biden which he claimed indicated that the president benefited from fraud and money laundering allegedly committed by Hunter's businesses.
"This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work..."
Donalds suggested the text was Jim Biden assuring Hunter that his father would help with their business dealings. But as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, the evidence Donalds presented was a fabrication: a Photoshopped text bubble with the text from Hunter that Jim was responding to omitted:
"But I can't pay alimony w/o Dad or tuitions or for food and gas. Really it's all gone. I can go make it up in 15/20 days I'm sure, but he's basically made it clear that he's not paying alimony b/c Mom made clear that she won't do it."
Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost used his time to chronicle House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's stance on an impeachment inquiry, suggesting that threats from far-right members of his caucus to force an impeachment vote, shut down the government and remove McCarthy from his speakership prompted him to reverse his position and allow the inquiry to go forward.
But the moment from Frost's speech that went viral came near the end when Frost took the committee to task for bringing people who had no direction to the Hunter Biden case as witnesses.
"We have one witness who has a lot of questions...one witness who knows something about accounting but has no real involvement in what's going on...and Mr. Turley stopping here on his way to his next Fox News hit."
This statement triggered an appalled, offended gasp from one of the GOP's witnesses, Eileen O'Connor, a former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's tax division. O'Connor's reaction was caught on camera.
Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz began his speech by roasting the hearing and the Republicans.
"As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one," he said.
Moskowitz's speech was distinguished by his use of graphics and other forms of visual aid. He brought up graphics quoting James Comer, Senator Chuck Grassley, and Trump to suggest that the committee did not have enough evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden and had other motivations behind holding the inquiry hearings.
Moskowitz then used charts and a dry-erase board to point out that Trump has had two impeachments and four criminal indictments brought against him, while Joe Biden has none of either.
"(Republicans) can't save Donald Trump. They can't take away the two impeachments and the four indictments, but they can try to put some numbers on the board for Joe Biden," he said.
He ended his speech by daring the GOP to vote on impeachment, implying that they lacked the votes to do so.
Congress has less than two days to pass a spending bill in order to prevent the federal government from shutting down. The House has scheduled votes for Saturday, Sept. 30, but it is not yet clear what specifically they will be voting on.
