While the Biden administration has just appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Donald Trump, the Republicans, now masters of one of the chambers of the American Congress, are also promising the American president a slew of investigations and hearings.
Americans can therefore expect, between now and the legislative and presidential elections of 2024, a long procedural battle between two camps who accuse each other of diverting justice and the mechanisms of parliamentary inquiry for political ends.
President “Joe Biden has completely instrumentalized the Department of Justice to attack his political opponents”, for example, said Texas Senator Ted Cruz on Twitter on Friday.
He was reacting to Justice Minister Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a “special prosecutor”, Jack Smith, to resume two investigations carried out for months against Donald Trump.
The first relates to the Republican billionaire’s efforts to change the results of the 2020 presidential election, the second to his management of the White House archives.
But where a part of the right cries, like the former president, to the “witch hunt”, the Democrats are preparing to make the same type of criticism to the Republicans.
The latter have the firm intention of using their newly acquired parliamentary prerogatives to launch a series of investigations, with the first target designated as the president’s youngest son.
“We do not intend to subpoena Joe Biden. We intend to quote Hunter Biden, ”said James Comer on CNN on Thursday, detailing this strategy.
This elected representative from Kentucky in the House of Representatives is tipped to become in a way the chief investigator of the right, following the midterm elections which saw the Republicans win this chamber of Congress, without however succeeding in taking also the Senate.
James Comer is in all likelihood to head the House Oversight Committee responsible for overseeing the executive and, if necessary, investigating its actions.
The elected official, however, made it clear that beyond Hunter Biden, it is the Democratic president himself who is targeted.
“You have to call it the Biden investigation, not the Hunter Biden investigation,” said James Comer, still on CNN.
The president’s youngest son, a businessman turned painter, with a hectic private life and a past as a drug addict, has long been in the sights of the American right.
Ukraine and China
The Republicans suspect him of having maintained dubious business relations in Ukraine and China, capitalizing on his father’s address book and political weight, when the latter was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009- 2017).
James Comer also indicated that he would work on his commission on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and on the responsibility in particular of a laboratory located in Wuhan in China, a subject dear to Republicans.
The right has also expressed its intention to investigate the management of the migration crisis on the border with Mexico.
While the Democrats reject all accusations concerning Hunter Biden, the elected Republican assures that the activity of the House of Representatives commission of inquiry will not be a political “circus”.
“This is not a commission where everyone is going to shout, be indignant and try to make the witnesses look like fools,” he promised in an interview on November 8 with Politico.
This while one of the most radical elected representatives of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has already expressed her interest in a seat on this famous commission.
The Democrats are already preparing the counter-offensive.
The Politico site recently revealed the creation of an association, the “Congressional Integrity Project”, exclusively intended to respond to parliamentary inquiries by the Conservatives.
Its goal is to “investigate investigators” and “expose their motives,” founder Kyle Herrig told Politico. The main objective of the Republicans, according to him, is not the quest for the truth but to “smear Joe Biden to serve the political interests of Donald Trump”.