Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on Latest Political Stunt by Chairman Comer
Washington, D.C. (September 25, 2024)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, issued the following statement after Chairman James Comer sent letters on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to a Pennsylvania munition factory:
“As President Zelenskyy fights for freedom and the rule of law on behalf of democracies around the world, Donald Trump and his craven MAGA followers side time and again with Vladimir Putin, extolling his bloody and lawless invasion as ‘genius’ and even inviting Russia to do ‘whatever the hell they want to America’s democratic allies in NATO. Trump’s own national security adviser concluded that Vladimir Putin has ‘played him like a fiddle.’ Eager to keep using the Committee as a tool for Trump’s floundering campaign, Chairman Comer, fresh from humiliating himself and his Republican colleagues with the laughingstock failure of his impeachment campaign against President Biden, is once again serving up a meaningless investigation tinged with Russian propaganda.
“Chairman Comer obviously does not understand nor appreciate the concept of an ‘ally.’ America is an ally of Ukraine, and Ukraine is an ally of America. Ukraine is in the middle of a war with Russia thrust upon it by Vladimir Putin’s filthy imperialist and irredentist invasion. The American people have invested billions of dollars to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and democracy because we share common interests and something called values.
“After calling our democratic Ukrainian ally a ‘foreign adversary’ and attempting to impeach the sitting President of the United States based on a lie concocted and planted by the Kremlin, including the ‘credible’ tips from his star ‘whistleblower,’ Alexander Smirnov, who now sits behind bars for peddling disinformation on behalf of Russian intelligence, Chairman Comer just soldiers on with yet more Kremlin talking points. In his current flailing attack on President Biden and Ukrainian President, Chairman Comer bizarrely disregards the overwhelming evidence that Donald Trump threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in military, strategic, and economic assistance that Congress voted for the people of Ukraine until President Zelenskyy complied with Trump’s demand that he make a public statement fraudulently declaring that Ukraine was engaged in a criminal investigation of Joe Biden for political corruption. Instead, he mistakes the honorable alliance between the American people and the Ukrainian people for political corruption. If that’s what Chairman Comer is looking for, he should check out the Oversight Democrats’ 156-page report with hundreds of supporting documents on Donald Trump’s pocketing of nearly $8 million from foreign states and monarchs while he was in office.
“The Republican Chairs of both the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have explicitly warned that their MAGA colleagues are spreading Russian propaganda. Yet Chairman Comer pays them no heed. He’s back at it again, concocting fictional American corruption to camouflage Trump’s sickening complicity with Putin’s brutal attack on the free and democratic Ukraine. The only media even following Chairman Comer’s embarrassing contortions now are Fox News and Russia’s state-owned propaganda outlets, RT and Sputnik, which faithfully and generously quote and cite Comer’s pathetic statements.”