Did you hear about the guy who went to a fight and a congressional hearing broke out?
Yes, you may have heard that old joke about a hockey game. But the partisan eruptions in Congress these days sometimes make it hard to tell the difference.
At least Congress has not devolved to the level of the near-fatal caning in 1856 of Sen. Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts, by Rep. Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina.
But, in terms of sheer heat, the House Oversight Committee appeared to come close in Thursday’s meeting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt. The charge: refusing to comply with a subpoena to hand over an audio recording of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur late last year.
Things began peacefully enough, then went off the rails after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who loves the spotlight, asked an out-of-nowhere question: Were any of the Democrats on the panel employing the daughter of New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in New York.
After an awkward silence, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a freshman Democrat from Texas, asked the understandable question. “Do you know what we’re here for?”
Why was Greene raising this issue that the hearing wasn’t about? Perhaps Greene — just like other Republicans seeking to curry favor with Trump by trolling the judge — Greene was signaling her credentials.
But Crockett was not about to play along. “Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland,” Crockett asked. “Do you know what we’re here for?”
Good question. “I don’t think you know what you’re here for,” Greene responded. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
Suddenly the nonsensical topic of fake eyelashes took center stage, igniting outrage from Democrats.
“That’s beneath even you, Ms. Greene,” scolded Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., chimed in, “That’s disgusting” and “absolutely unacceptable.”
This led to nearly an hour of lawmakers screaming over one another and trading insults, as Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, struggled mightily to restore order.
“How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person,” AOC added.
After a vote to decide whether Greene should be allowed to continue to speak narrowly passed, Crockett asked the chair what she called a “hypothetical question” about his ruling on Greene’s comments.
“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” Crockett said, “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde bad built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
Oh, no, she didn’t. Things flew so far off the rails that it was left to Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican and anything but a shrinking violet, to “personally apologize to the American people for the disorder.”
Right. Which brings us back to the original question of what the meeting was supposed to be about.
Republicans were voting on whether to hold Garland in contempt for refusing to hand over the audio recording of Biden’s session with Hur, even though they already had received the transcript of the conversation. Predictably, the panel voted to hold Garland in contempt along party lines, hours after the House Judiciary Committee did the same, and the measure was sent to the full House.
As you may recall, the special counsel’s yearlong investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents ended with no criminal charges being recommended because the special counsel concluded there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support a conviction.
However, Hur’s report sparked a political firestorm as the report described Biden as someone who could appeal to a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and detailed instances where Hur said Biden couldn’t remember when his son died or what years he was vice president.
So, even after the transcripts have been released, it’s not surprising that Biden’s campaign might worry about soundbites turning up in attack ads.
I wish I could say I am reassured by the way House Republicans have handled this very sensitive debate about the Biden tapes, but I’m not.
